Bogdan Andrei Bernevig (born 1978 in Bucharest) is a Quantum Condensed Matter Professor of Physics at Princeton University. He graduated from Stanford University (bachelor's degree in physics and master's degree in mathematics in 2001) and received his PhD from Stanford University under Shoucheng Zhang. As a postdoctoral fellow he came to the Center for Theoretical Physics at Princeton University, where he is now a full professor of Physics. 

His research deals with the application of topology and interactions in solid state physics, for example in the fractional quantum hall effect, fractional Chern Insulators, superconductors, and others. Bernevig aims to integrate first principle calculations, without which a clear understanding of materials is impossible, with effective theories for the behavior of their ground-states. The hope is that a pipeline that neglects neither the ab-initio nor the strong interaction effects which need analytical understanding can be built to predict new quantum materials with exotic states, including room temperature superconductors. 

Among other honors, Bernevig received the New Horizons in Physics Prize, the Sackler Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, Alexander von Humboldt Professorship as well as  the James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials from the American Physical Society. He was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2022 "for broad and significant contributions to the discovery and understanding of new topological quantum phases".  

Andrey Chubukov is the William I. and Bianca M. Fine Chair in Theoretical Physics in the William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute at the University of Minnesota. His research interests are in the analysis of the role of orbital degrees of freedom in Fe-based superconductors, quantum-critical behavior and non-Fermi liquid transport in metals at the onset of charge of spin order, pairing in non-Fermi liquid regime in near-critical fermionic systems (e.g., systems at the verge of magnetic instability), and unconventional orders in frustrated antiferromagnets. In my research I combine analytical and numerical techniques. Methods include perturbation theory, parquet renormalization group, and Eliashberg theory (both for superconducting and normal state properties). 

Päivi Törmä is a professor in the Department of Applied Physics, Aalto University, Finland and has a MSc degree from the University of Oulu, Finland, a Master of Advanced Study degree from the University of Cambridge, U.K., and PhD in 1996 from the University of Helsinki. Her research ranges from theoretical quantum many-body physics to experiments in nanophotonics. Her work has revealed a new connection between quantum geometry and superconductivity that explains why flat bands can carry supercurrent, which is essential in the search for superconductors that work at high temperatures. In this Simons Collaboration, Päivi Törmä aims to integrate the analysis of quantum geometry concepts into first-principles calculations and the description of specific quantum materials, in order to utilize the potential of quantum geometry in searching and understanding new superconductors. Päivi Törmä has received the ERC Advanced Grant and the Academy of Finland Academy Professorship and is an elected member of the Academia Europaea.

Daniel Agterberg is a Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. He received his PhD in 1996 at the University of Toronto and held postdoctoral positions at ETH-Zurich (1996-1998) and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee Florida (1998-2000). His research is on correlated quantum materials with an emphasis on superconductivity and   magnetism. Specifically, he combines symmetry, topology, and electronic interactions to address the most exciting quantum materials. This has led to the discovery of Bogoliubov Fermi surfaces in superconductors, to the development of the theory of pair density wave superconductivity, and to the explanation of spin-triplet superconductivity from spin-singlet superconducting interactions (as observed in CeRh2As2).  In this Simons Collaboration, he will apply this approach to discover new insights into superconductivity driven by the non-trivial interplay of electronic valley, orbital, and spin degrees of freedom. 

Erez Berg (Born in 1977 in Haifa, Israel) is a Professor at Department of Condensed Matter Physics in the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. He studies the physics that emerges from the interaction between many quantum particles. A better understanding of such systems is vital for eventually creating practical quantum devices based on high-temperature superconductors-materials that conduct electricity with virtually no dissipation but do so well above the near-absolute-zero temperatures required for the emergence of this phenomenon in conventional superconducting materials.

Prof. Berg adds to the collaboration his expertise in unconventional superconductivity, two-dimensional electronic systems, and numerical techniques, such as quantum Monte Carlo. In addition, he has worked extensively on non-Fermi liquid and superconductivity in flat bands, two recurring themes in the field of superconductivity beyond BCS theory.

Prof. Berg received the 2024 André Deloro Prize for Scientific Research, the Blavatnik Award for Young scientists in Israel from the Blavatnik Family Foundation (2019), a consolidator ERC grant (2019), the Morris Levinson Prize in Physics (2015), a Minerva ARCHES prize (2013), and an Alon fellowship (2012).

Nick Bultinck is an associate professor of physics at Ghent University (Belgium), where he also obtained his MSc (2013) and PhD (2017) degrees. After his PhD, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Princeton University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Oxford University. In 2022 he received a University Research Fellowship of the Royal Society, and since 2023 he leads the ERC Starting Grant project SIESS. Nick’s research interests include strongly correlated electron systems exhibiting magnetism, superconductivity and/or other forms of symmetry breaking. He is particularly interested in understanding the interplay between these different symmetry breaking patterns, especially when they occur in the presence of strong quantum fluctuations. In the last years his research has focussed predominantly on two-dimensional Van der Waals materials, such as for example magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene and other moiré materials. He also works on developing and applying tensor network algorithms to strongly correlated quantum many-body systems.

Laura Classen is an independent research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Solid StateResearch and Assistant professor at Technical University of Munich. She obtained a M.Sc. from RWTH Aachen university (2013) and a PhD from University of Heidelberg (2016). Before her current positions, she worked as a postdoc and Feodor-Lynen Fellow at Brookhaven National Laboratory and University of Minnesota (2017–2020), and as an Assistant Scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory (2020-2021).

In her research she investigates correlated quantum materials with methods of quantum field theory. In these materials the collective behaviour of interacting electrons leads to fascinating states of matter such as superconductivity and quantum magnetism. The goal her research is to understand the mechanisms behind the formation of the different states, and predict the resulting properties. In 2023, she received an ERC starting grant to study emergent phases including superconductivity near quantum critical points.

Ion Errea (Donostia/San Sebastián, 1984) holds a degree (2007) and PhD (2011) in Physics from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). He was a post-doctoral researcher at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris and the Donostia International Physics Centre (DIPC). He was shortlisted for the 2015 Volker Heine Young Investigator Award and was selected Emerging Leader by the Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter. 

Since 2018, he leads the research group on Quantum Theory of Materials at the Centre for Material Physics (CSIC-UPV/EHU) and is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Applied Physics at the University of the Basque Country. His research focusses on the development of theoretical methods for calculating complex properties of solids: quantum and anharmonic effects in atomic vibrations, electron-phonon interaction, and the application of these methods in hydrogen-based superconductors, themoelectric materials, phase transitions in solids and nanostructures, etc. 

Ion Errea leads the ERC-funded Starting Grant project titled Discovery and Characterization of Hydrogen-Based High-Temperature Superconductors. His research has been published in prestigious scientific journals including Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Nano Letters and Physical Review Letters. He has also been a guest speaker at dozens of international conferences.

Kristjan Haule is a Distinguished Professor of Physics at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He was born in Slovenia and obtained his B.A. in Physics in 1997 and his Ph.D. in 2002 from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He conducted his Ph.D. research at Karlsruhe University in Germany and at the Jožef Stefan Institute in Slovenia. Haule was a postdoctoral fellow at Rutgers (2002-2003) and held a research position at the Jožef Stefan Institute (2003-2005). He became an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University in 2005, an Associate Professor in 2009, a Professor in 2012, and a Distinguished Professor in 2019. He received the NSF Career Award in 2008, the Rutgers Board of Trustees Award for Scholarly Excellence in 2009, and was an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow from 2008 to 2010. He was also awarded the Blavatnik Award in 2013 and the Simons Fellowship in 2020. In 2019, he was named an APS Fellow in the Division of Materials Science. 

Haule’s research specialties lie in condensed matter theory, with a focus on electronic structure theory for correlated electron solids and algorithm development. He is particularly known for developing predictive theories for correlated electron solids, including the implementation of a method that embeds dynamical mean-field theory with density functional theory, as well as the variational diagrammatic Monte Carlo method, which provides exact predictions for the uniform electron gas problem. Haule has published over 170 scientific papers, obtained over 20,000 citations, and has the h-index of 70. 

Miguel Marques received his PhD degree in Physics from the University of Wuerzburg in 2000, working under the supervision of E.K.U. Gross in the field of density functional theory for superconductors. He then held several post-doctoral positions in Spain, Germany, and in France. From 2005 to 2007 he was assistant professor at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. From 2007 to 2014 he was CNRS researcher at the University of Lyon 1, and from 2014 to 2023 professor at the Martin-Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg. He is now professor at the Research Center Future Energy Materials and Systems of the Ruhr University Bochum. His current research interests include density functional theory, superconductivity, application of machine learning to materials science, etc. He authored more than 200 articles, and has edited three books published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Physics series. He also organized several summer schools and international workshops, such as the Benasque School and International Workshop in TDDFT, that takes place in Benasque, Spain every second year.

Nikolay Prokofiev is a physics professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA. He graduated from Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MSc 1982) with PhD form Kurchatov Institute, Moscow (1987).   His research interests include numerical algorithms for solving strongly correlated quantum and classical systems consisting of bosons, fermions, and spins, new phases of matter, critical phenomena, quantum decoherence, and all aspects of superfluidity and superconductivity. He is one of co-inventors of the worm algorithm and diagrammatic Monte Carlo methods, which radically changed our ability to simulate properties of large systems. In this Collaboration, Nikolay will (i) investigate the role of Coulomb repulsion on superconductivity with the goal of achieving precise parameter-free treatment of its effects in materials, (ii) establish criteria for breakdown of the Migdal-Eliashberg theory at strong electron-phonon coupling and properties of the emerging polaron/bipolaron liquid, (iii) develop high-order diagrammatic approach to superconductivity in flat-band systems.

Jonathan Ruhman is an associate professor at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. He graduated from the Weizmann Institute of Science in September 2015, after which he accepted the Gordon and Betty Moore Fellowship for postdoctoral studies at MIT (2015-2018). Ruhman's research focuses on strongly correlated physics in electronic systems, with an emphasis on unconventional superconductivity. He has made notable contributions to the study of superconductivity in low-density systems, such as SrTiO3 and YPtBi, including constraining plasmon superconductivity and developing the theory of ferroelectric quantum criticality in dilute metals. Additionally, Ruhman is one of the pioneers in tackling the problem of the "measurement-induced phase transition" observed in monitored random unitary circuits. His contributions have been recognized by several prizes and fellowships, including the Krill Prize for promising young investigators, awarded by the Wolf Foundation, and the "Frontiers in Science Award" from the Beijing Institute of Basic Sciences and Applications.

Oskar Vafek is a Professor of Physics at Florida State University and the Director of the condensed matter theory group at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. He was born in Slovakia and obtained his Ph.D. in 2003 from the Johns Hopkins University under the supervision of late Zlatko Tesanovic. Vafek was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford (2003-2006) and became an Assistant Professor at Florida State University in 2006. He received the NSF Career Award in 2010. In 2022, he was named an APS Fellow in the Division of Condensed Matter Physics.

His research involves a broad range of topics in the theory of quantum condensed matter, from superconductivity in correlated electron systems to Chern insulators in flat bands. In this collaboration Vafek plans to contribute to predictive description of the mechanism and nature of superconductivity in novel material platforms, particularly flat bands.

Tero Heikkilä is a professor in the Department of Physics of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He graduated from Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University) (MSc 1998 and PhD 2003). His research interests include flat-band superconductivity,  superconducting (nano)electronics, topological matter, spintronics, and open quantum systems. He is a pioneer in flat band superconductivity, in particular related to his and his colleague’s prediction on the relevance of flat bands in increasing the critical temperature of superconductivity in graphene-based structures and in general in materials hosting flat bands. In this Simons Collaboration, Tero Heikkilä participates in understanding the role of quantum geometry in observables related to superconducting heterostructures. Tero Heikkilä has received the ERC Starting Grant and led an FET Open project on superconducting detectors.

Aline Ramires is a Scientist at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland. She received a M.Sc. from the Fluminense Federal University, Brazil (2010) and a Ph.D. from Rutgers University, USA (2015). She was a Junior Fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Studies at ETH Zurich (2015-2018), a SIMONS-FAPESP Young Investigator at the ICTP-SAIFR (2018-2020), and a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (2019-2020). She has successfully attracted funding from the Sao Paulo Research Foundation, the Simons Foundation, and the Swiss National Science Foundation. 

In her research, she investigates unusual electronic phenomena in complex quantum materials, for which understanding the role of multiple internal degrees of freedom is key. She has investigated materials in the family of ruthenates, pnictides, and heavy-fermions and introduced the notion of superconducting fitness, which has been acknowledged as a valuable theoretical guideline for understanding the stability of exotic superconducting states and their unusual responses to external fields. She received the Early Career Scholar Award from the University of British Columbia (2021) and the Nevill Mott Prize (2022) for her work in this area. The latter "for her pioneering work for developing new models and innovative mathematical approaches for the description of heavy fermion metals and anomalous superconductors.” 

In this collaboration, Aline Ramires will be involved in the study of the non-trivial interplay of valley, orbital, and spin degrees of freedom in superconductors and in the determination of symmetry-based low-energy effective models for the description of complex material platforms such as twisted multilayer graphene. 

Jörg Schmalian is professor of theoretical physics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, (KIT) working on the quantum physics of electrons in strongly correlated materials. He and his research team develop theories for quantum materials with novel electric, optic, or magnetic properties. With his collaborators he predicted the recently observed electron hydrodynamics in graphene, formulated the theory of nematic order and fluctuations in iron-based and topological materials, advanced the theory of superconductivity without quasiparticles, and worked on the theory of the glass transition.

At KIT he is the head of the Institute for Theory of Condensed Matter. He also heads  the division Theory of Quantum Materials at the Institute for Quantum Materials and Technologies at KIT. Prior to moving to Karlsruhe in 2011, Dr. Schmalian was a full professor at Iowa State University and Senior Scientists at the Department of Energy Ames Laboratory.  Schmalian serves on a number of international advisory boards, has co-organized numerous international conferences, workshops and summer schools, and has been honored by some awards, including a fellowship from the American Physical Society, the 2022 John Bardeen Prize for superconductivity theory, and the 2023 Physics-Award Dresden. He is a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences.

Boris Svistunov is a professor of physics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (since 2003). He earned an MSc in physics in 1983 at Moscow Engineering Physics Institute. In 1990, he earned a PhD in theoretical physics at Kurchatov Institute (Moscow), where he worked from 1986 to 2003. In 2008 Boris was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society for “pioneering contributions to the theory and practice of Monte Carlo simulations for strongly correlated quantum and classical systems, the invention of the worm algorithm and diagrammatic Monte Carlo techniques, and fundamental theoretical results on superfluid phenomena in quantum gases, liquids, and solids.” In this Simons Collaboration, Boris Svistunov will be working on developing and applying diagrammatic Monte Carlo approach to superconductivity in strongly correlated electronic systems. 

Andrew Millis was educated at Harvard, Cambridge University  and MIT. He currently serves as Professor of Physics at Columbia University and is the co-Director of the Center for Computational Quantum Physics at the Simons foundation’s Flatiron Institute, where he is also Managing Director.  He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the 2017 Hamburg Prize in Theoretical Physics. 

Millis has made crucial scientific contributions to a broad range of topics in correlated electron physics. Highlights include the basic theory of heavy fermion/Kondo lattice systems and of equilibrium and nonequilibrium quantum criticality in metals, foundational work on the optical and magnetic properties of high transition temperature superconductors and on the transport properties of molecular junctions and the basic physics of colossal magnetoresistance in manganese oxide materials. He discovered a new type of metal-insulator transition and demonstrated its relevance to the rare earth nickel oxide materials and established the role of lattice degrees of freedom in correlation-induced metal-insulator transitions His pioneering work on Mott-insulator/band-insulator heterostructures helped establish the theoretical basis for this area of research.  Millis’ development of the `hybridization expansion’ with Werner and Troyer enabled the quantitative study of realistic models of correlated materials and pioneered the extension of these methods to the nonequilibrium case.  His current research interests include the nonequilibrium physics of driven systems, mechanisms of superconductivity, machine learning methods of compressing quantum many-body physics, and excitonic, superconducting and metal-insulator phase transitions in moiré  materials. Working first with David Eisenbud and then with Yuri Tschinkel in the Mathematics and Physical Sciences Division of the Simons Foundation, Millis helped devise, launch and administer programs for large-scale philanthropic support of mathematics, theoretical computer science and theoretical physics, initiated programs to foster the development of theory in the life sciences, and helped develop the Flatiron Institute. 

Millis is an unfunded member of the collaboration, currently working on the theory of superconductivity in the presence of combined strong electron-electron and electron-phonon interactions, on superconductivity in moiré materials.