Summary
Thibault Bertrand is a Senior Strategic Teaching Fellow in Applied Mathematics at Imperial College London. Trained as a theoretical physicist, his expertise is in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics.
Before moving to the Department of Mathematics at Imperial College London in 2018, he was a postdoctoral fellow with Dr Raphaël Voituriez at Sorbonne Université (Laboratoire Jean Perrin). Thibault was trained in the Department of Physics at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan (now Paris-Saclay) for his undergrad obtaining both a BSc and a MSc with honors. In 2016, he graduated with a PhD from Yale University (New Haven, CT, USA) where he worked on jamming in model disordered systems under the supervision of Prof Corey S. O'Hern (Yale) and in collaboration with Prof Mark D. Shattuck (CCNY).
His personal webpage can be found at thibaultbertrand.com
RESEARCH
His research is interested in understanding collective and emergent behaviours in out-of-equilibrium and disordered systems. Employing analytical and computational tools from non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, soft condensed matter physics and stochastic processes, his work finds applications in a variety of settings in physical, life and social sciences. Examples include statistical mechanics of active matter, collective dynamics in tissues, jamming in disordered systems, random walks in complex environments, stochastic models of opinion formation, swelling and drying dynamics of gels. Combining theory and modelling, he tries to work closely with experimentalists.
There are always research projects available in the group for motivated undergraduate, postgraduate and prospective PhD students and postdocs; more information here!
TEACHING
Thibault has extensive experience in teaching in various departments and countries. While at Yale, he taught modules in the undergraduate curriculum in Engineering and Applied Science and mentored numerous undergraduate and graduate students. He also experimented with active learning and hands-on project based courses when he co-developed two brand new modules at the Center for Engineering, Innovation and Design (ENAS118 Introduction to Engineering, Innovation and Design and ENAS344 Musical Acoustics and Instrument Design). These courses have been very successful and are part of the regular offering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Yale.
At Imperial College, he is in charge of two modules: MATH40001/40009 Introduction to University Mathematics and MATH50008 PDEs in Action. Thibault was on the curriculum review committee representing the Applied Mathematics and Mathematical Physics section. In 2020, he received with colleages Dr. Marie-Amélie Lawn and Prof. Kevin Buzzard the President's Medal for Teaching Innovation.
Publications
Journals
Anand S, Lee CF, Bertrand T, 2024, Active Jamming at Criticality, Physical Review Research, ISSN:2643-1564
Bertrand T, d'Alessandro J, Maitra A, et al., 2024, Clustering and ordering in cell assemblies with generic asymmetric aligning interactions, Physical Review Research, Vol:6, ISSN:2643-1564
Alston H, Cocconi L, Bertrand T, 2023, Irreversibility across a Nonreciprocal PT-Symmetry-Breaking Phase Transition., Phys Rev Lett, Vol:131
Killeen A, Bertrand T, Lee CF, 2023, Modeling growing confluent tissues using a lattice Boltzmann method: interface stability and fluctuations, Physical Review Research, Vol:5, ISSN:2643-1564
Cocconi L, Alston H, Bertrand T, 2023, Active bound states arise from transiently nonreciprocal pair interactions, Physical Review Research, Vol:5, ISSN:2643-1564