TYC Postgraduate Student Day 2025

Arts Two LT and foyer space, Queen Mary University of London

The TYC Student Day is a one-day celebration of the research in theory and simulation of materials and molecules that is done by PhD students in the four London Colleges that make up the TYC (UCL, Imperial, King’s and QMUL), and Brunel University London and London South Bank University. There is a programme of talks given by a selection of final year students, together with a poster session, and invited guest speakers.

Cash prizes will be awarded for the ‘Best Talk’ and ‘Best Poster’.

We invite all TYC students to submit abstracts to present a poster of their research, and for final year students to submit abstracts for talks.  ~12 talks will be selected (12 minute presentations and 2 minute Q&A), and all of the posters from across the four London TYC colleges, plus LSBU and Brunel, will be on display at the poster presentation during lunch and at a drinks reception at the end of the day.

Abstract submission deadline: Sunday 18th May 2025

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Schedule:

Invited speakers:

An Industrial Perspective on the Challenges and Opportunities in Multiscale Materials Modelling – Dr Davide Di Stefano – Ansys, Inc https://www.ansys.com/company-information/the-ansys-story
Materials are at the core of engineering simulations, directly influencing the accuracy and reliability of performance predictions. However, materials data is often treated as static input derived from costly and time-consuming experimental testing. Increasing material complexity and performance demands require more precise, adaptable, and predictive data. Multiscale materials modelling offers a powerful solution to the problem, providing mechanistic insights that can contribute to the reduction of experimental efforts, and enhancing accuracy and efficiency. Despite its promise, multiscale modelling is not yet widely adopted in industry.

In this talk, we will provide an industrial perspective on the open challenges in fulfilling the “multiscale promise” and share examples of effort within Ansys to address these challenges. Examples will include physics-based workflows for multiscale modelling,  use of machine learning for scale-bridging, and advanced multiscale characterization techniques for calibration and validation.

Dr. Davide Di Stefano¹, Dr. David Mercier², Dr. Pascal Salzbrenner¹, Bhanuj Jain¹

Davide is lead R&D Project Manager at Ansys in the office of the CTO. Davide’s expertise lies in multiscale modelling, microstructure modelling, atomic diffusion, materials design, and materials intelligence.

Bind – Making Disordered Proteins Druggable – Thomas Löhr, Head of Compute – Bind Research https://bindresearch.org/
We are a UK-based not-for-profit Focused Research Organisation (FRO) committed to improving patient outcomes by turning disordered proteins into viable drug targets.

Many incurable diseases (e.g., cancer, neurodegeneration) involve biomolecules called ‘disordered proteins’. Considered ‘undruggable’ by the mainstream pharmaceutical industry, disordered proteins continuously change their three-dimensional shapes and lack long-lived sites with which drug-molecules can interact.

Our mission is to make disordered proteins druggable. We are screening millions of disordered protein/drug-molecule pairs to learn the rules of drugging disordered proteins.

Building on our expertise and working with academic and industrial partners, we are leveraging cutting-edge biology, engineering, and AI to deliver new drugs and tools. We are building comprehensive datasets of disordered protein-drug interactions to create public assets to fuel AI models and accelerate the discovery process. To accomplish this in a manner for maximum societal benefit, we have established a Focused Research Organisation (FRO), a fully-independent not-for-profit entity dedicated to this goal.

Thomas is a Computational biophysicist who is passionate about the intersection of simulation and machine learning to study challenging systems.

Abstract booklet: