The Institut Courtois is made up of scientists and managers dedicated to their fields of discovery and innovation.
Carlos Silva
Director
Director
Carlos Silva is a full professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Montreal. He is an expert in the field of ultrafast and nonlinear spectroscopy of advanced materials. Renowned worldwide, he has also become an undisputed reference in quantum physics. He has been serving as the director of the Courtois Institute since July 1, 2023.
With a dual bachelor’s degree in physics and chemistry, as well as a Ph.D. in chemical physics, Carlos Silva has an extensive track record. Throughout his career, he has been affiliated with numerous academic institutions. He has worked as a postdoctoral fellow and subsequently as EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge and as a visiting professor at Imperial College London, the Italian Institute of Technology, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico. From 2005 to 2018, he was a professor in the Department of Physics at UdeM, where he obtained a Canada Research Chair in Organic Semiconductor Materials and established an ultrafast laser spectroscopy laboratory. Since 2017, he held the position of professor of chemistry, physics and materials science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he was also co-director of the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics (COPE), a research center that brings together researchers from the departments of chemistry, physics, materials, mathematics, and electrical, chemical, and mechanical engineering.
He has an ambitious vision for the Courtois Institute, where he aims to establish a culture of collaborative and multidisciplinary interaction to ensure impactful scientific output. He intends to leverage the expertise of the departments of physics, chemistry, and computer science to generate new impactful knowledge at the interface between materials sciences and artificial intelligence. He endeavours to establish the Institute as an internationally recognized environment conducive to world-leading research in fields that intersect novel materials, quantum physics, robotics, and artificial intelligence.
As the director of the Courtois Institute, he plans to establish partnerships with various Canadian and international institutions while promoting multidisciplinary research. “I consider the Courtois Institute to be a transformative organization that will elevate us to the top of the Canadian research community. The objective is to achieve ambitious yet credible growth to reach the excellence goals we have set for ourselves,” he says.
Within the Institute, Carlos Silva will continue his research on the optical properties of materials used in quantum technologies, such as photonics.
Mickaël Dollé
Creator of recyclable batteries
Department of Chemistry
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.
The research program of his Courtois Chair focuses on high-throughput screening of glasses and glass ceramics through the automation of synthesis and physicochemical characterization, supported by simulations. While there are several tools available to predict the existence and properties of crystalline materials, especially for batteries, there is no equivalent tool for glasses and glass ceramics. Machine learning algorithms can use this database to assist us in the rational design and development of glasses and glass ceramics with controlled properties and/or new phases.
Solid-state chemistry, materials science, and electrochemistry will be at the core of the activities, with a strong interest in understanding the relationship between development (synthesis and processing)/microstructure/properties in order to improve existing materials or create new ones.
The targeted outcomes include generating fundamental knowledge related to energy transition and the exploration of innovative concepts in order to design novel materials for future technologies.
William Witczak-Krempa
Quantum theorist
Department of Physics
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).
The management team helps researchers to pursue their ambitions. It works with the Institut Courtois to foster innovation, discovery and open research.
Carlos Silva
Director
Director
Carlos Silva is a full professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Montreal. He is an expert in the field of ultrafast and nonlinear spectroscopy of advanced materials. Renowned worldwide, he has also become an undisputed reference in quantum physics. He has been serving as the director of the Courtois Institute since July 1, 2023.
With a dual bachelor’s degree in physics and chemistry, as well as a Ph.D. in chemical physics, Carlos Silva has an extensive track record. Throughout his career, he has been affiliated with numerous academic institutions. He has worked as a postdoctoral fellow and subsequently as EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge and as a visiting professor at Imperial College London, the Italian Institute of Technology, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico. From 2005 to 2018, he was a professor in the Department of Physics at UdeM, where he obtained a Canada Research Chair in Organic Semiconductor Materials and established an ultrafast laser spectroscopy laboratory. Since 2017, he held the position of professor of chemistry, physics and materials science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he was also co-director of the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics (COPE), a research center that brings together researchers from the departments of chemistry, physics, materials, mathematics, and electrical, chemical, and mechanical engineering.
He has an ambitious vision for the Courtois Institute, where he aims to establish a culture of collaborative and multidisciplinary interaction to ensure impactful scientific output. He intends to leverage the expertise of the departments of physics, chemistry, and computer science to generate new impactful knowledge at the interface between materials sciences and artificial intelligence. He endeavours to establish the Institute as an internationally recognized environment conducive to world-leading research in fields that intersect novel materials, quantum physics, robotics, and artificial intelligence.
As the director of the Courtois Institute, he plans to establish partnerships with various Canadian and international institutions while promoting multidisciplinary research. “I consider the Courtois Institute to be a transformative organization that will elevate us to the top of the Canadian research community. The objective is to achieve ambitious yet credible growth to reach the excellence goals we have set for ourselves,” he says.
Within the Institute, Carlos Silva will continue his research on the optical properties of materials used in quantum technologies, such as photonics.
Delphine Bouilly
Associate Director
Associate Director
Delphine Bouilly is committed to developing bionoelectronics, an emerging interdisciplinary approach that aims to harness the exceptional electrical properties of nanomaterials to detect, probe and understand the molecules that make up the living world.
In her laboratory, her team designs electronic circuits using low-dimensional materials such as carbon nanotubes (1D) or graphene (2D). These circuits enable them to measure the subtle interactions between these materials and biological molecules, such as DNA or proteins, by means of fine electrical current fluctuations. To achieve this, Delphine Bouilly and her team are developing new methods based on miniaturization, automation and scaling to synthesize, assemble, measure and model nanomaterials in complex aqueous environments and compact lab-on-a-chip setups.
Delphine Picca
Office and Administration Technician
Office and Administration Technician
Delphine Picca holds a university degree in management and has over 10 years of experience in administration. Her professional journey is marked by a commitment to quality and efficiency, her strong organizational skills, and her proficiency with technological tools, making her an asset for managing Institut Courtois.
Driven by her interest in the academic environment and the use of artificial intelligence in materials science, she values this opportunity to contribute to an intellectually stimulating environment and to participate in the creation and dissemination of knowledge.
Nathalie Tang
Coordinator
Coordinator
Nathalie Tang holds a PhD in physical chemistry from the Université de Montréal and has over 8 years of experience as a scientist and project manager in an academic research environment. She has managed multidisciplinary projects involving students, professors and professionals in the fields of medicine, engineering and material science. Over the years, she has developed an expertise on the characterization of nanomaterials and their application in the biotechnology field. Following her curiosity for artificial intelligence (AI), she joined Mila, the Quebec Institute of Artificial Intelligence as a coordinator for the scientific direction and strategic initiatives. With her expertise as a scientist and project coordinator, coupled with her knowledge of AI and materials, she is the ideal candidate to assist the director of the Institut Courtois in making the institute become a premier institute for pioneering the discovery of new materials through the application of automation and AI.
Our researchers share a determination to address some of the most complex challenges facing society by accelerating the process of discovery of new materials and contributing to their development.
Ahmad Hamdan
Department of Physics
Ahmad Hamdan has been a professor in the Department of Physics at the Université de Montréal since 2017. He specializes in the physics of plasmas, with a particular focus on those generated in a liquid medium. The plasmas he studies exhibit novel properties in terms of temperature (1000s K), pressure (10s bar), species density (1017-19 cm-3) and lifetime (100s ns). Unlike conventional plasmas, liquid plasmas represent extremely efficient and environmentally-friendly processes for the production of nanomaterials, among other applications.
The inherent flexibility of these processes enables plasmas to be initiated and maintained in various liquids, including water, hydrocarbons and cryogenic liquids. In addition, the use of electrodes with a variety of chemical compositions contributes to this versatility. These approaches have led to the fabrication of a wide range of nanomaterials, including nanocomposites, materials with novel crystallographic phases, and binary and tertiary metal nanoalloys.
Andrea Bianchi
Department of Physics
Bianchi’s group uses solid-state chemistry methods to create and try to understand novel unconventional superconductors and magnets. Our tools to study these systems include thermodynamic measurements, as well as neutron scattering and muon spectroscopy.
Antonella Badia
Department of Chemistry
Antonella Badia’s research focuses on two-dimensionally organized molecular assemblies. Using metal surface-binding organic ligands, her group produces redox-active self-assembled monolayers to electrochemically trigger and modulate processes at interfaces for applications such as actuators, sensors, and molecular electronics.
Audrey Laventure
Expert in functional materials for 3D printing
Department of Chemistry
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.
Bang Liu
Department of Computer Science and Operations Research
Bang Liu is deeply fascinated by the intricacies of natural and artificial intelligence. As he explores the principles of intelligence, he also leverages his expertise in applying AI techniques to various scientific fields, with a pronounced focus on materials science.
With a commitment to creating safe, controllable, and interpretable AI systems, Bang’s extensive knowledge of natural language processing (NLP) and multimodal & embodied learning is crucial. He’s ardently passionate about using AI’s transformative power in key areas such as materials science, health, and Virtual Reality (VR). This interdisciplinary approach aims to forge new discoveries and solutions by merging AI with other scientific disciplines.
In August 2020, Bang Liu became an Assistant Professor at the University of Montreal’s Department of Computer Science and Operations Research (DIRO). He plays an active role in the RALI laboratory, focusing on NLP research. He’s also an associate member of the Mila – Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute and holds a Canada CIFAR AI Chair. Bang’s academic journey began with a B.Engr. from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2013, followed by M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Alberta in 2015 and 2020, respectively.
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