Atomically precise carbon nanostructures offer a new route to quantum systems built from the bottom up. By combining molecular design, on-surface synthesis and scanning probe microscopy, we can control atomic structure, electronic states and magnetic interactions within the same platform.
\r\nIn this talk, I will follow the path from bottom-up synthesized graphene nanoribbons [1,2] to open-shell nanographenes [3] and designer quantum spin systems [4]. I will discuss how atomic structure can determine electronic topology and how molecular spins can be coupled into well-defined quantum chains. Recent examples include Haldane chains [4], alternating-exchange spin chains [5] and antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chains [6], where collective and fractional excitations can be probed directly at the atomic scale.
\r\nMore broadly, this work illustrates a materials-science strategy in which structure, functionality and interactions are programmed at the level of molecular building blocks. Rather than optimizing properties in an existing material, the aim is to design the material and its quantum behavior together. Atomically precise carbon nanostructures therefore provide a model platform for exploring how synthesis, structure and emergent functionality can be linked in a predictive way, with implications for the future design of low-dimensional electronic, magnetic and quantum materials.\r\n
Thesis Directors: Prof. C. R. Binder Signer, Dr M. Duygan
\r\nCivil and Environmental Engineering doctoral program
\r\nThesis Nr. 11896
\r\n
\r\nTo take part in the public defense, please contact directly the speaker
\r\n
\r\nPlease register via the Google Form here:
\r\nhttps://forms.gle/e6UF2Sr9LdcgNLUn7
Thesis Director: Prof. K. Severin,
\r\nChemistry and Chemical Engineering doctoral program
\r\nThesis Nr. 11719
\r\n
\r\nTo take part in the public defense, please contact directly the speaker
Chirality is omnipresent in nature through a fundamental coupling between chirality and angular momentum. Despite extensive experimental evidence, the underlying mechanisms of this coupling remain debated. Here, we will explore how chiral magnetic textures can be stabilized in altermagnets, a new class of magnetism. Turning to structurally chiral magnetic molecules, we will show that chirality is directly linked to their intrinsic magnetic moments. Bringing both together, we will discuss how molecular design can control spin phenomena at hybrid chiral molecule-magnet interfaces. Our findings pave a pathway towards functional \"chiraltronic\" devices – turning a fundamental puzzle into a technological opportunity.
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\r\nMechanics doctoral program
\r\nThesis Nr. 11364
\r\n
\r\nTo take part in the public defense, please contact directly the speaker
“To emphasize (...) dubious uses of risk is perverse, a dirty way of talking about a
\r\nclean scientific subject”
\r\nMary Douglas, Risk and Blame, 36.
\r\n
\r\nAs the baseline condition of so many territories shaped by extractive industries, administrative delay, and climatic instability, risk is prevalent. Yet ecological risk—pollution, fires, floods, heatwaves, droughts—is still presented as problems to be solved rather than conditions to be inhabited. This also speaks to an outsourcing of risk through externalized consequences of spatial injustice. Banks, developers, material supply chains, normative institutions, subcontracting hierarchies —all contend with calculated risk. This edition of Pressure Points asks us to unpack what it means to live with the risk, how it is managed, commodified, quantified, invented, politicized, instrumentalized, tamed, and to think, design, cohabitate intellectually and physically with it. The assembled guests should help us think and build literacy toward developing tools for living within uncertain territories and futures.
\r\n
\r\nSonia Seneviratne
\r\nMonday, October 26, 17:00 CET
\r\n
\r\nSonia Seneviratne is a Full Professor in Land-Climate Dynamics at ETH Zurich, with a focus on climate science and environmental physics. She conducts research on climate extremes such as droughts, land-climate processes, and human-induced climate change, based on climate modelling and data analyses. Listed among the Highly Cited Researchers of Web of Science (Clarivate) since 2014, she was a Coordinating Lead Author and Lead Author on several reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), including the Special Report on Extreme Events, the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, and the Sixth Assessment Report in 2021. Seneviratne has received the Macelwane Medal of the American Geophysical Union in 2013 and the Hans-Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union. Since July 2023, she serves as IPCC Working Group I Vice-Chair for the seventh assessment cycle (2023–2030). Her most recent contribution, published in June 2026, is the release of MESMER v1.0.0, an open-source climate model emulator she helped develop as part of her research group. It reproduces the spatial climate patterns of complex Earth System Models, including temperature and several climate-extreme indicators, making detailed climate information accessible to the wider research community.
\r\n
\r\nRIOT (Research and Innovation on Territory) is a laboratory engaged in pedagogy and research within the Institute of Architecture (ENAC) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology–EPFL, led by Charlotte Malterre-Barthes with Elif Erez, Flore Guichot, Jeremy Ratib, Summer Islam, Antoine Iweins, Kathy Kao, Nathalie Marj, Romain Dubetier-Grenier, Sylvie Clavel, and Saira Mohammed. Believing that the construction sector and design disciplines must pivot and wholeheartedly engage in the current social and climatic urgencies by rewiring themselves to face and repair the harm, RIOT utilizes tactics and strategies to decarbonize, decolonize, and depatriarchalize space production–by design.
\r\n
\r\n
“To emphasize (...) dubious uses of risk is perverse, a dirty way of talking about a
\r\nclean scientific subject”
\r\nMary Douglas, Risk and Blame, 36.
\r\n
\r\nAs the baseline condition of so many territories shaped by extractive industries, administrative delay, and climatic instability, risk is prevalent. Yet ecological risk—pollution, fires, floods, heatwaves, droughts—is still presented as problems to be solved rather than conditions to be inhabited. This also speaks to an outsourcing of risk through externalized consequences of spatial injustice. Banks, developers, material supply chains, normative institutions, subcontracting hierarchies —all contend with calculated risk. This edition of Pressure Points asks us to unpack what it means to live with the risk, how it is managed, commodified, quantified, invented, politicized, instrumentalized, tamed, and to think, design, cohabitate intellectually and physically with it. The assembled guests should help us think and build literacy toward developing tools for living within uncertain territories and futures.
\r\n
\r\nLiam Ross
\r\nTuesday, November 3, 17:00 CET
\r\n
\r\nLiam Ross is an architect and senior lecturer in Architectural Design at the University of Edinburgh, with a focus on building standardisation as a mode of architectural design, and in particular on fire-safety regulation. He also examines how those standards produce surprising side-effects as they are reinterpreted in practice. His book Pyrotechnic Cities: Architecture, Fire-Safety and Standardisation was published by Routledge in 2022, and describes the way that architectural design is an instrument of political agency.
\r\nHis work has been exhibited and published widely, including in Architectural Research Quarterly (arq), Arch+, and journalistic outlets such as Blueprint, Prospect, and Volume.
\r\nRoss has experience of practice in the UK and US, including a period of 5 years with Malcolm Fraser Architects, and maintains a relationship with professional practice as co-founder of ESALA Projects, a consultancy offering pro-bono and for-fee design services to public and third-sector clients. His most recent work, published in January 2026 in Architectural Research Quarterly, includes a co-authored article with Jon Goodbun entitled ‘Design and the extended building site: Ecologies of production and the production of ecologies’, which reframes the building site as an 'extended' socioecological system reaching across the global supply chains, material extraction, and labour that construction depends on, arguing that building is an ecological and political process rather than a purely material one.
\r\n
\r\nRIOT (Research and Innovation on Territory) is a laboratory engaged in pedagogy and research within the Institute of Architecture (ENAC) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology–EPFL, led by Charlotte Malterre-Barthes with Elif Erez, Flore Guichot, Jeremy Ratib, Summer Islam, Antoine Iweins, Kathy Kao, Nathalie Marj, Romain Dubetier-Grenier, Sylvie Clavel, and Saira Mohammed. Believing that the construction sector and design disciplines must pivot and wholeheartedly engage in the current social and climatic urgencies by rewiring themselves to face and repair the harm, RIOT utilizes tactics and strategies to decarbonize, decolonize, and depatriarchalize space production–by design.
\r\n
Thesis Director: Prof. N. Kavokine,
\r\nPhysics doctoral program
\r\nThesis Nr. 13424
\r\n
\r\nTo take part in the public defense, please contact directly the speaker