Frontiers of Unconventional Superconductivity Virtual Workshop
February 2-4, 2026

Frontiers of Unconventional Superconductivity

February 2 – 4, 2026

Rice University (Online)

Registration

Registration is required, though participation is free.

Register Here

Rationale and Scope

This workshop will survey the field of unconventional superconductivity. It has been triggered by the continued exciting new developments on the nickel-based systems, and will in addition feature recent activities on the cuprate, iron-based and heavy-fermion superconductors.

By broadly covering the field, the workshop seeks to identify the phenomena that are common across the materials platforms for unconventional superconductivity, highlight the emerging principles with the potential to unify their understanding, and develop the perspectives that may further advance the field.

The workshop, organized by Rice University’s Extreme Quantum Materials Alliance (eQMA), will bring together a diverse pool of experimental and theoretical experts on various aspects of unconventional superconductivity in strongly correlated materials.

These will include:

  • Nickelate superconductivity
  • Cuprate superconductivity
  • Iron-based superconductivity
  • Heavy fermion superconductivity
  • Emerging common themes – quantum criticality, strange metallicity, orbital-selective Mott correlations, and beyond

Schedule & Logistics

The workshop will be held online. The scientific program will start on Monday, February 2 and conclude on Wednesday, February 4.

To accommodate speakers from all continents, we will have late morning and night sessions during each of the three days.

Morning Sessions 11:00am – 1:00pm CST (US)
Evening Sessions 8:00pm – 10:00pm CST (US)

We hope to have permission to record the talks and make the video recordings available, so that participants from Asia and Europe can have access to talks given in sessions they were unable to attend.

Agenda:

Monday, February 2
Session I – Nickelates and FeSCs
11:00am - 11:30am Julia Mundy (Harvard U.)
“TBA”
11:30am - 12:00pm Berit Goodge (MPI CPfS Dresden)
“Resolving the structural basis for superconductivity in strain-engineered nickelate thin films”
12:00pm - 12:30pm George Sawatzky (U. British Columbia)
“Extreme coupling between the charge and spin degrees of freedom in cuprates and nickelates”
12:30pm - 1:00pm Eduardo da Silva Neto (Yale U.)
“Pairing mediated by nematic fluctuations in Fe(Se,S)”
Session II – Heavy fermions and nickelates
8:00pm - 8:30pm Laura H. Greene (Florida State U.)
“Planar Tunnel Spectroscopy of CeCoIn5: Investigation of local-moment pairing”
8:30pm - 9:00pm Hironori Sakai (JAEA Tokai)
“NMR as a probe of spin fluctuations in correlated electron systems: What we have learned from the Ce-115 family and beyond”
9:00pm - 9:30pm Meng Wang (Sun Yat-Sen U.)
“Superconductivity in monolayer-trilayer La3Ni2O7 and enhancement of superconductivity in doped bilayer La3Ni2O7”
9:30pm - 10:00pm Yijun Yu (Fudan U.)
“Superconducting bilayer nickelate thin films under compressive strain”
Tuesday, February 3
Session III – Heavy fermions and nickelates
11:00am - 11:30am Johnpierre Paglione (U. Maryland)
“Key issues in understanding superconductivity in UTe2”
11:30am - 12:00pm Yucheng Guo (Rice U.)
“A Strain-ARPES Study: Momentum and Orbital Selective Nematicity in BaFe2(As0.7P0.3)2”
12:00pm - 12:30pm Zhi-Xun Shen (Stanford U.)
“TBA”
12:30pm - 1:00pm Christine C. Au-Yeung (U. British Columbia)
“Universal electronic structure of multilayer nickelates via oxygen-centred planar orbitals”
Session IV – Nickelates and FeSCs
8:00pm - 8:30pm Nanlin Wang (Shanghai JiaoTong U.)
“Infrared and terahertz spectroscopy and ultrafast pump-probe study on trilayer and bilayer Ruddlesden-Popper nickelate superconductors”
8:30pm - 9:00pm Zhuoyu Chen (SUSTech Shenzhen)
“Thin-film nickelate superconductivity and electronic structures”
9:00pm - 9:30pm Stevan Nadj-Perge (Caltech)
“Observation of the Cooper-pair density modulation state in iron-based superconducting flakes”
9:30pm - 10:00pm Junjie Zhang (Shandong U.)
“Pressure-induced superconductivity up to 96 K in nickelate single crystals grown at 1 atm”
Wednesday, February 4
Session V – Nickelates and cuprates
11:00am - 11:30am Harrison LaBollita (Flatiron Inst.)
“From square-planar to octahedral nickelates: an electronic structure perspective”
11:30am - 12:00pm Yiming Wang (Rice U.)
“Orbital-selective superconductivity in Ruddlesden–Popper nickelates”
12:00pm - 12:30pm Peter Hirschfeld (U. Florida)
“Overdoped cuprates: disorder, inhomogeneity, Homes scaling and all that”
12:30pm - 1:00pm Suchitra Sebastian (Cambridge U.)
“Transport and thermodynamic measurements in the underdoped cuprates”
Session VI – Cuprates
8:00pm - 8:30pm Fabio Boschini (EMT-INRS, Varennes)
“Direct evidence for competition between superconductivity and pseudogap in the dark electronic side of cuprates”
8:30pm - 9:00pm Bernhard Keimer (MPI Stuttgart)
“Resonant x-ray scattering from charge order in cuprates”
9:00pm - 9:30pm Atsushi Fujimori (U. Tokyo)
“Nodal metallic states versus antiferromagnetic hole pockets in multilayer cuprates”

Confirmed Invited Speakers

(Invited talks: 20 + 10 mins)

Cuprate Superconductivity

  • Suchitra Sebastian
    Cambridge U.
  • Bernhard Keimer
    MPI Stuttgart
  • Atsushi Fujimori
    U. Tokyo
  • Fabio Boschini
    EMT-INRS, Varennes
  • Peter Hirschfeld
    U. Florida

Heavy Fermion Superconductivity

  • Laura Greene
    Florida State U.
  • Hironori Sakai
    JAEA Tokai
  • Johnpierre Paglione
    U. Maryland

Iron-Based Superconductivity

  • Stevan Nadj-Perge
    Caltech
  • Eduardo da Silva Neto
    Yale U.
  • Yucheng Guo
    Rice U.

Nickelate Superconductivity

  • Zhi-Xun Shen
    Stanford U.
  • Julia Mundy
    Harvard U.
  • Meng Wang
    Sun Yat-Sen U.
  • Yijun Yu
    Fudan U.
  • Berit Goodge
    MPI CPfS Dresden
  • Christine C. Au-Yeung
    U. British Columbia
  • Nanlin Wang
    Shanghai JiaoTong U.
  • Zhuoyu Chen
    SUSTech Shenzhen
  • Harrison LaBollita
    Flatiron Inst.
  • Yiming Wang
    Rice U.
  • George Sawatzky
    U. British Columbia
  • Junjie Zhang
    Shandong U.

Organizers

Organized by Rice University’s Extreme Quantum Materials Alliance (eQMA).

  • Antia Botana
    Arizona State U.
  • Pengcheng Dai
    Rice University
  • Andrea Damascelli
    U. British Columbia
  • Qimiao Si
    Rice University
  • Ming Yi
    Rice University

Contact:

For questions on the scientific program, please contact one of the organizers.
For logistics questions, please contact Vivian Moyeda (vm65@rice.edu).