Gonville & Caius College Fellow Dr Michele Simoncelli has received the Swiss Physical Society Award in Computational Physics. The prize was sponsored by COMSOL – a multiphysics software used by engineers and researchers to simulate real-world designs, devices, and processes across industries – and was awarded to Dr Simoncelli for his contributions to a modern theory of thermal transport in solids.

Dr Simoncelli received the award for his ground-breaking contributions to unifying the existing fundamentally different microscopic theories of heat conduction in crystals and glasses, and for the development of a set of macroscopic “viscous heat equations” that generalise 200-years-old Fourier’s law and explain why in some devices heat propagation can become fluid-like, rather than diffusive. 



With his work at the junction of theoretical condensed matter physics and computational material science, he has contributed to achieving a milestone in solving the long-standing problem of accurately predicting the thermal properties of crystals with ultralow or glass-like thermal conductivity, explaining conduction anomalies in minerals, and controlling fluid-like heat transport in extreme thermal conductors.

Dr Simoncelli said: “I’m extremely honoured to receive this award, and with our growing research team we are looking forward to pushing the boundaries of the research that led to it. Our theoretical work is relevant for several technological applications, ranging from electronics to aerospace, and in Michaelmas 2023 we will have openings at masters (Part III) and PhD level on projects involving both fundamental research and collaborations with industry leaders.”

Dr Simoncelli recently published a paper on the long-standing problem of predicting the thermal conductivity of glasses from first principles (i.e., without relying on any empirical parameter). He also received a 2021 EPFL Doctorate Award for his thesis.

Photo: Dr Simoncelli, right, receiving his award from Sven Friedel, managing director of COMSOL Multiphysics, Zurich (credit: Swiss Physical Society)