Great Hall, King’s College London, Strand

The TYC Student Day is a one‑day celebration showcasing PhD research in the theory and simulation of materials and molecules across the four London Colleges of the Thomas Young Centre (UCL, Imperial, King’s and QMUL), as well as Brunel University London and London South Bank University.

The programme features talks from selected final‑year students, a poster session, and invited guest speakers.

We invite all TYC students to submit abstracts for poster presentations, and final‑year students to submit abstracts for oral presentations. Around 12 talks will be selected (12‑minute presentation + 2‑minute Q&A). All posters from participating institutions will be displayed during the lunchtime poster session and again during the drinks reception at the end of the day.

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

Abstract submission and registration deadline: Sunday 17 May 2026

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Schedule:

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Invited speakers:

Emergent Collective Phenomena in Low-Dimensional Materials – Giorgia Fugallo, Ecole Normale Supérieure

CNRS Researcher, Associate Editor for Computational Materials Science, and past winner at the TYC Student Day (circa 2010/11).

In low-dimensional materials, reduced dielectric screening, quantum confinement, restricted scattering phase space, and enhanced many-body effects profoundly affect lattice dynamics, electronic excitations, and light–matter interactions, enabling physical regimes that are absent in conventional three-dimensional systems.

In this talk, I will discuss how these effects reshape thermal and optical response in 2D materials, driving the breakdown of conventional bulk descriptions such as Fourier transport and standard three-dimensional exciton models. Particular emphasis will be placed on collective phenomena associated with strong phonon and light–matter interactions, including phonon hydrodynamics and room-temperature second sound, together with exciton and phonon superradiance in the crossover from monolayer to bulk systems, opening new perspectives for nanoscale photonics and energy-efficient thermal management.

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[1] G. Fugallo et al., Nano Lett. 14, 6109 (2014).
[2] A. Cepellotti et al., Nat. Commun. 6, 6400 (2015).
[4] G. Fugallo et al., Phys. Rev. B 98, 184307 (2018).
[4] C. Elias et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 137401 (2021).
[5] G. Cassabois et al., Phys. Rev. Research 4, L032040 (2022).
[6] G. Cassabois et al., Phys. Rev. X 12, 011057 (2022).
[7] M. Poulos et al.  Phys. Rev. B 110, 075434 (2024)
[8] T. Ferre et al. J. Phys. Chem. C 129, 5511 (2025)

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