Our people

Expert in functional materials for 3D printing

Audrey Laventure is a specialist in materials chemistry, particularly so-called “amorphous” materials, a term that is opposite to her passion for her discipline. Her work, at the crossroads of chemistry and physics, explores the emerging field of 3D printing. Laventure is studying the behaviour of materials in the context of additive manufacturing to develop an advanced understanding of the material organization to create functional 3D objects. 

3D printing involves complex architectures. One of the objectives of the Laventure research group is to transition from complex yet passive architectures, to complex and functional ones. 

Laventure’s research is focused on understanding how to modulate the properties of materials through molecular assembly. Artificial intelligence makes it possible to accelerate the high throughput screening of the processing conditions materials that can be used in 3D printing to endow them with new functionalities. 

After completing her Ph.D. as a Vanier scholar at the Université de Montreal and a NSERC postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Calgary, Audrey Laventure returned to her alma mater in 2020 to start her research laboratory. She holds the Canada Research Chair Tier II in Functional Polymer Materials.

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Pioneer of quantum information science

Gilles Brassard is considered the founding father of quantum information science in Canada and one of its earliest pioneers in the world. Working with physicist Charles Bennett (IBM Research), he created a protocol that laid the foundations for quantum cryptography, which is the key to unconditionally secure communications. In 1992, he developed the theoretical protocol for quantum teleportation, in collaboration with Bennett and four other colleagues including Claude Crépeau, now at McGill University. In 1998, this theory was verified experimentally by another team of researchers, a feat that was selected by the journal Science as one of the 10 Breakthroughs of the year. In 2018, those two discoveries earned him and Charles Bennett the Wolf Prize in Physics, often considered a forerunner to the Nobel Prize. He was the first Canadian to be awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics.

Brassard’s work is foundational in quantum information science, an emerging field with the potential to create computers immeasurably more powerful than conventional computers by exploiting sometimes-counter-intuitive manifestations of quantum theory. 

Gilles Brassard is a Montreal native who has been passionate about mathematics since he was a child. He enrolled at the Université de Montréal at age 13 to earn a bachelor’s degree and then a master’s degree in computer science. In 1979, he completed a Ph.D. in cryptography at Cornell University and became an assistant professor at the Université de Montréal the same year. He held the Canada Research Chair in Quantum Information Science for 21 years from 2001 until 2021. He founded and is now the scientific director of INTRIQ, the Transdisciplinary Institute for Quantum Information.

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Robot Learning

Glen Berseth wants to go beyond machines that only perform repetitive tasks that people showed them how to complete, and instead develop robots that can learn to solve problems more independently, in the real world, based on own their experiences. 

Industry experts and researchers in various fields deal with complex processes and designs that can benefit from automated feedback loops for testing and improvement. Prof. Berseth is working to expand the applications of recent artificial intelligence methods to speed up and improve the accuracy of development process for creating chemicals and new materials. These have many potential uses, from constructing greener buildings at lower cost to producing food more efficiently. 

Glen Berseth joined the University of Montreal in the summer of 2021 and Mila, the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute. He previously did postdoctoral research at the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab.

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Molecule organizer

James Wuest wants to learn how the properties of materials depend on the molecules they contain and on how they are organized. Once the basic rules are mastered, novel materials can be built by design from molecular components specifically synthesized for the purpose.

The ability to create on the molecular scale led Wuest to choose a career in organic chemistry. Today, he is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Montreal and is internationally recognized for studies of molecular organization, both fundamental and applied. The field is poised to use advances in artificial intelligence in many ways, such as in controlling how molecules are arranged in crystalline solids.

Many challenges lie ahead. In some fields, masses of data are acquired quickly, but in materials science information is gathered slowly. At the same time, opportunities for making new materials are unlimited. The tools of artificial intelligence needed to operate in this arena have yet to be created, and the prospects for advances resulting from collaboration are exciting.

James Wuest is the Canada Research Chair in Molecular Materials. In 2013, he was awarded the Prix Marie-Victorin, the Québec government’s highest honour in the sciences. He taught at Harvard University, where he earned his Ph.D., before accepting a position at the University of Montreal in 1981.

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Plasma specialist

Luc Stafford, professor in the Department of Physics, is interested in developing plasma-based processes to synthesize or add new functionalities to materials. 

In the context of the Canada Research Chair in the Physics of Highly Reactive Plasmas, he works on exploiting the unique properties of plasmas to develop the materials and processes of the future, in an environmentally responsible manner. Building on fundamental knowledge of plasmas and their interactions with organic and inorganic materials, he seeks to achieve atomic-level control of materials and processes, which is important for the development of many new technologies, including those in the quantum realm.

In 2020, Luc Stafford and his colleagues designed a new-generation battery made of water and wood, a feat that was chosen the scientific discovery of the year by the readers of Québec Science magazine. 

Luc Stafford is also a special advisor to the Vice-Rector for Research, Discovery, Creation and Innovation. He is responsible for the Building a Sustainable Future innovation lab, which brings together multidisciplinary groups to reflect on sustainable development issues in research and education.

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Creator of recyclable batteries

Lithium-ion batteries are being used in a growing number of everyday devices—cellphones, laptops, electric vehicles—and it is important to reduce their life-cycle environmental impacts reduced to a minimum. Mickaël Dollé is working to make them greener. He has already patented a technique for recovering cathode materials from lithium-ion batteries to make new batteries without generating waste. Batteries can now be produced in a circular economy-type closed loop.

A chemist by training, Dollé has a general interest in ecodesign: how batteries can be made with less energy and greener materials. One way is to replace fluorine-based materials that require the use of toxic solvents and complicate recycling with new polymers. In 2020, Dollé and his colleagues designed a battery made from water and wood, an achievement that was selected as the scientific discovery of the year by the readers of Québec Science magazine.

Before joining the University of Montreal in 2014, Dollé completed postdoctoral studies at the Lawrence-Berkeley National Laboratory and the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart. He also worked as a researcher at the CNRS in France.

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Trapper of the light

Philippe St-Jean, holder of a Research Chair in Quantum Photonics from the Ministère de l’Économie et de l’Innovation du Québec, studies the interaction of light and matter in the quantum regime.

When a classical light bulb is turned on, billions of electrons move in all directions and their motion emits light. Philippe St-Jean is interested in the movement of individual electrons in microscopic detail, which is governed by quantum mechanics. By placing single electrons in optical cavities, which act as sounding boards for light, he is able to tailor with a high precision the photonic modes to which they couple. For example, he can engineer cavities where light flows in a single direction or is trapped for an extended period of time.

In addition to better understanding complex quantum phenomena at the single electron level, his work paves the way to the conception of more robust and precise quantum light sources, which are particularly useful in quantum cryptography. Philippe St-Jean’s work can also be transposed to trap photons in cavity arrays to simulate new materials. 

Philippe St-Jean has worked at the Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at CNRS and the University of Paris-Saclay. He became a professor in the Department of Physics in the summer of 2021.

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Vibration imager

Richard Martel is a semiconductor specialist who has contributed to designing a unique microscope that performs not only optical but also vibrational imaging. The hyperspectral image it produces makes it possible to observe the spectrum of each pixel using photon lasers. He is now developing an equivalent device with electrons for better, quasi-atomic resolution.

This type of spectromicroscope is part of a new generation of instruments that can generate phenomenal amounts of spectroscopic data, but analyzing the data is complex and demanding. The process could be improved by artificial intelligence. There are many applications, in particular in the microelectronics industry (production of lasers and sensors) and, more generally, in the design of sensors that use the quantum properties of electrons to generate a signal.

After earning a Ph.D. in surface science at Université Laval, Richard Martel spent nearly 10 years doing research at IBM in the United States before becoming a professor of chemistry at the University of Montreal. He is the Canada Research Chair in Electrically Conductive Nanostructures and Interfaces.

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Colour wizardry

When you look at your smartphone, you see a host of vibrant colours. It most likely has not occurred to you that a considerable amount of research has gone into making that happen. Rationally designing and preparing compounds that emit a rainbow of colors for use in such electronic devices is a part of Professor William Skene’s research.

Pr. Skene’s research team also focuses on making materials that are both flexible and stretchable for use in organic electronic devices such as smartphones. The team’s research is paving the way for the next generation of plastic electronics that will be bendable, stretchable, and unbreakable. His team also works on developing environmental benign processes for device fabrication along with integrating renewable resources into devices. These approaches will reduce the waste generated during device fabrication and they will improve the lifecycle management and sustainability of electronics.

Pr. Skene values interdisciplinary collaborations because discoveries can be integrated into every step of the device fabrication chain from materials synthesis to processing and device upscaling.

Pr. Skene decided on a career in chemistry because he wanted to understand how things worked on a molecular level. The Winnipegger pursued post-doctoral studies in France at the Université de Strasbourg (formerly Université Louis Pasteur) before joining the Université de Montréal in 2003.

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Quantum theorist

William Witczak-Krempa is interested in materials that display quantum properties at low temperatures. For example, some materials lose electrical resistance and become superconductors, which have important practical applications, from lossless electricity transmission to the manufacture of extremely powerful magnets. 

However, low temperatures limit large-scale production. Could quantum materials be created at higher temperatures and be made more accessible to humans? William Witczak-Krempa’s team is tackling the question using a variety of mathematical and numerical tools, including artificial intelligence.

Understanding matter at the quantum level is essential for, among other things, the creation of a quantum computer, the device physicists and computer scientists dream of. Its computing power would far exceed that of any existing computer. 

William Witczak-Krempa came to the University of Montreal after completing two postdoctoral fellowships, one at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo and the other at Harvard University. He is the Canada Research Chair in Quantum Phase Transitions and a member of the Regroupement québécois sur les matériaux de pointe (RQMP), and the Centre de recherches mathématiques (CRM).

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Computer science eminence

Yoshua Bengio is a world-leading expert in artificial intelligence whose pioneering work on deep learning earned him and his colleagues Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun the A.M. Turing Award in 2018. The Turing is considered the Nobel Prize of computer science. 

Deep learning is a branch of artificial intelligence that exploits artificial neural networks to create new generations of algorithms that can help computers learn by themselves. In deep learning, information is processed through a sequence of operations modelled on the way the brain works, in which multiple neural layers form a deep network. 

Today, neural networks are driving advances in fields ranging from natural language processing and machine translation to protein structure modeling, voice and facial recognition, robotics, self-driving vehicles, medical image analysis, drug discovery, weather simulation, and even managing power outages and vehicular traffic.

Yoshua Bengio has been instrumental in making Montreal a hub of AI research. He is the founder and scientific director of Mila, the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, and the scientific director of IVADO, the Institute for Data Development. Around these two flagship AI institutions, a scientific ecosystem of more than 1,000 researchers has grown in the vicinity of the MIL campus in recent years. 

Concerned about the social impact of his work and that of his colleagues, Yoshua Bengio actively contributed to the Montreal Declaration for a Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence and co-directed the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) Working Group on Responsible AI.

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Acting Director

Richard Leonelli is a full professor in the Department of Physics, at the head of which he was from 2013 to 2021. A specialist in optical spectroscopy of semiconductors, he has published more than 100 papers on various materials including, in particular, quantum confinement heterostructures. He is a founding member of the Regroupement sur les matériaux de pointe and sits, as a representative of the Université de Montréal, on the advisory committee for the Québec pre-university study program in the natural sciences and on the Certificate and Engineer Studies Commission of Polytechnique Montréal.

To learn more about his research