InstituteQ Colloquium: Professor Annica Black-Schaffer

This InstituteQ Colloquium features Professor Annica Black-Schaffer of Uppsala University. The title of her talk is “Quantum geometry in quantum materials.“

Professor Annica Black-Schaffer is a Full Professor and head of the Quantum Matter Theory research program at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Uppsala University.

The work in her research group spans and combines several contemporary areas in modern physics, such as unconventional superconductivity, topological matter, and strongly correlated electron systems. Much of her group’s current focus is on mechanisms and properties of unconventional, topological, or inhomogeneous superconductivity.

She received her Ph.D. in condensed matter theory in 2009 from Stanford University. She then spent 1.5 years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, NORDITA, in Stockholm, before moving to Uppsala, where she was promoted to Full Professor in 2017.

Event details

When: 10:15-11:00 on 10.4.2026
Where: Lecture theater FYS1 at the University of Jyväskylä & online
Host: University of Jyväskylä Physics Professor Tero Heikkilä

From Annica Black-Schaffer: What will your talk discuss?

Topology has profoundly reshaped condensed matter physics over the last two decades, both by revealing new phenomena and by deepening our understanding of quantum materials. More recently, a different aspect of quantum geometry, the quantum metric, has also emerged as an important concept for describing material properties.

In this talk, I will introduce the basic ideas of topology in quantum materials, including why topological superconductors can host Majorana fermions, particles that are their own antiparticles. I will then present examples in which the quantum metric, rather than topology, governs physical behavior.