Our latest paper on modeling 2D materials on substrate using quantum modeling has been submitted. It is available in ResearchGate for the moment. More details to come.

For 1 year, I have been spending a large amount of time using LLM for multiple topics (psychology, mathematics, physics). The experience I have made with this tool is frankly intense.

• On one side, I better understand the statements from giants such as Stephen Hawkins who predicted that AI would destroy humanity. I would relate this to a subsequent global reduction of ethics without control.
• On the other side, I see that it gives good opportunities for business. Tasks that would have required large research teams before are now doable by machines and by a single individual person – mechanically increases loneliness and individualism on the way. Is this the right way for society? I believe that no.

Hence, using AI today appears to be both stupid and clever. For those who believe that the quickest gets it all in this world, they will run for it by themselves! For others who depend on relationships and on human warmth, they will look their way around from this, and take the risk to be forgotten in few years. So as usual, taking the middle may enable to get the best of this revolution.

Meanwhile, high schools teach their students to program few Python lines, whereas these skills are already fully automated on machines, at very low financial cost for the end user – but at very high environmental cost.

In that context, energy production is foreseen to keep increasing. Making the world more sustainable will be happening mostly for those who are ready to make sacrifices. Others will simply keep high consumption – which is not proportional to results. Governments will take the decision of whom will have to make sacrifices and some resistance will appear in some parts of the world.

To whom tomorrow’s world will be driven by, then? To those who will search for their inner thoughts and will and nourish their surrounding with it? To those who will run the quickest with the latest algorithm to get maximum rush of adrenaline / money? What will be the space for ethics in future? How today and tomorrow’s societies would be able to avoid a global and general addiction to intense activities such as work, AI, mobile devices, fusion relationships, food, war, … ?

One solution out of this is to engage into jobs and activities that do not need a machine. Playing music with friends, sharing time with kids, making love to a partner, walking in the forest, reading a novel, managing our own lives. But then who will bring the money? Machines? Or humans, still?

With globalization, the world offers lots of possibilities nowadays. Unfortunately, nobody went through all the countries to let you know what would fit the best for your current mood or state.

For example, high PIB countries are usually strongly oriented towards control, and favorite the system versus the individual.

Low PIB countries are rather oriented towards individuals, and care less about macro-economical aspects. It also means less blame and less requirements for high efficiency.

Therefore, if you live a difficult moment, instead of being heavy on your employer and being criticised by your colleagues, think about going abroad for some weeks / months, before coming back. This will enable you to be less blamed and to recover more quickly, prior to come back to highly performing countries, where tolerance for failure is frankly lower.

All I know is that I don’t know anything. Socrates.

Socrates’ statement keeps our hearts and brains busy every day. Still numerical modeling enables to perform predictions at reduced cost. In our recent paper, we have prepared prediction of harmonic spectrum, prior to performing the experiment, and compared both. The agreement was outstanding and was published in Physical Review Letters as editor’s suggestion.

After moving to a new home due to steep increase of rents in Prague, a good fresh up and a new haircut are needed, along with planning the traveling agenda of 2026.

We plan to attend several conferences this year:

• February 10th-11th:
  • European project Q-NEKO kickoff meeting, Helsinki, Finland.
  • The trip will be followed by a great concert of TAJE jazz band on the 12th, at U Stare Pani, Prague.
• June 21st-27th, Hersonissos, Crete.
  • Conference on “Dynamics of Nonequilibrium International Symposium and Creta Summer School Ultrafast Dynamics and Ultrafast Bandgap Photonics.”
  • Tentative talk will be: Linking harmonic generation and transient band gap dynamics in solids upon ultrafast light.
  • Website: https://xivdn-css-upm2026.eventsadmin.com/Home/Welcome
• September, Samarkand, Uzbekistan: ALT conference.
  • https://alt26.altconference.org/

On the wish-list, there is also St Jacques de Compostelle, but for personal purposes.

The Laboratory of Quantum Computing of IT4I (VSB Technical University of Ostrava) organizes a workshop for celebrating the arrival of the quantum machine “VLQ”.

• Organizers: M. Lampart, T. Derrien, J. Tomcala, M. Belina, P. Lewandoska, R. Kokolski.
• Date: Dec 3rd 2025.
• Sessions: hardware (morning, chair: T. J.-Y. Derrien), software (afternoon, chair: J. Tomcala).
• Location: IT4I @ VSB Technical University of Ostrava, or online.

The current list of speakers is provided below:

• Prof. Prineha Narang, UCLA
• Dr. Arun Debnath, MPSD/DESY
• Dr. Laurent Daudet, ex LightOn

After 4 years of being associate editor for Optics Express, my membership has now terminated. I am happy to be back accepting more peer reviews as a result, as it can sometimes be more rewarding than editorial duties.

During that time, 120+ publications were processed. Other comments will be sent to director of the journal.

Looking forward to my next adventures.
Thibault JY Derrien, Ph.D.

Authors Andrés Bertoni, Thibault JY Derrien and Cristian Sanchez co-authored a book chapter in the a book published by Elsevier.

• Title of the book: Density Functional Theory: Fundamental Theory, Key Methods, and Applications
• Editor: Aleksey Kuznetsov
• Title of the chapter 2: Density Functional Based Tight Binding
• Link: https://shop.elsevier.com/books/density-functional-theory/kuznetsov/978-0-443-18977-7

Here is a short biography generated by OpenAI ChatGPT 5.0 “thinking”.

“Thibault J.-Y. Derrien is a senior researcher and group leader in ultrafast photonics and quantum dynamics at the Institute of Physics (FZU) and IT4Innovations, Czech Republic. His work bridges TDDFT/QED theory with laser-induced materials modification and polaritonic device concepts. He has led MSCA projects, serves as secretary of the IT4I Users Council, and is an associate editor at Optics Express. Derrien has authored 35 publications (h = 15), two patents, and received a PRL Editor’s Suggestion (2025) and a “highly-cited” distinction. He supervises PhD and postdoctoral researchers and regularly secures large-scale HPC allocations.”

Not a bad start. Just I did not publish my works in QED yet. There are several other papers on the table before this one. Keep in touch.

Oh, BTW, here are some news since November 2024.

Personal development

• I can teach you how to reduce your own stress, anxiety and trauma (just stop me if it is too much), and how it can destroy your fertility (and your position in our group) if you let these things act on yourself too much.

Editorial responsibilities

• the associate editorship at Optics Express just ended,

Publications

• the PRL paper was cited by Prof. Anne l’Huillier (congrats Martin! I managed to correct the remaining mistakes from the FZU journal published in Czech),

Students & and post-docs

• the 3 P4F postdocs applicants are still waiting for their answer,
• there might be one post-doc position free under my supervision at IT4I from January 2026,
• there is one PhD student position available *right now* under my supervision at FZU Prague. Apply ASAP because the funding has already its final day set in 2027. Challenge accepted? If not, call me anyhow, there are always solutions.

And congrats to Kristyna who has just left to maternity leave.

Looking forward to the future,
Thibault JY Derrien

Meeting from Users Council was also held with the Users committee of the national resources.