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About the Group
About the Group
I run the Foundations of Thermodynamics Group (FTG) at NTU Singapore, which is currently funded by the Nanyang Assistant Professorship Grant. Its goal is to provide a space for research on all aspects of the conceptual foundations of thermodynamics, with particular focus on understanding the conceptual foundations of thermodynamics beyond the classical domain, e.g., in the quantum and relativistic domains, how thermodynamics relates to other non-fundamental domains such as condensed matter systems, fluid dynamics and neuroscience, and how it bears on questions in philosophy such as (but not limited to) questions about emergence, reduction, inter-theory relations, the nature of non-fundamental reality, the laws of nature, and the relation between symmetries and reality.
The group is currently supported by Research Associate Mel Ong.
Find recordings of our past events here on YouTube!
Group Members
Group Members
Eugene Y. S. Chua, Nanyang Assistant Professor, Group PI: Eugene is Nanyang Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he leads the FTG. His research focuses on the philosophy of science, especially physics. He has published work on black hole evaporation, relativistic and quantum thermodynamics, the foundations of quantum mechanics, and the emergence of time in quantum gravity.
Yichen Luo, Research Fellow: Yichen received his Ph.D. in philosophy of physics from the University of Western Ontario. His research spans foundational and epistemological issues in black hole physics, General Relativity, and general topics in scientific modeling and explanation. Before his Ph.D., he studied philosophy at Tsinghua University and physics at Beijing Normal University.
Luca Molinari, PhD Student: Luca received his BA in philosophy from the University of Pisa and his MA from the Scuola Normale Superiore. He joins the group as a graduate student with a project on simulations in physics. His interests are in history of physics and general philosophy of science as well as in statistical mechanics and physical modeling.
Mel Ong, Research Associate: Mel is a philosophy and classics graduate with an interest in logic, especially self-referential paradoxes. She is also interested in film programming and sees it as a tool to promote solidarity. She hopes to highlight and examine stories on queer identity, womanhood and aesthetics. In her free time, she enjoys making digital art.
News
News
Nov 2026: Luca, Eugene, and Yichen are all presenting papers at PSA 2026, in San Diego, California. Come say hi!
Oct 2026: Call for abstracts is now officially open for the Foundations 2027 conference! Details below and here: https://www.ntu.edu.sg/soh/news-events/conferences/foundations-of-physics-conference-2027
Oct 2026: Luca, Eugene, and Yichen presented works-in-progress at A Philosophy of Physics Workshop organized in NTU.
Sep 2026: Luca presented his work, "The Limits of Analogy: Disanalogy as a Failure of De-Idealization" at the 2026 LMPST meeting in Taiwan. The work was also accepted in the Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association, to be published in the journal Philosophy of Science!
Sep 2026: Eugene presented his work on integrable quantum statistical mechanics at the Warsaw Dialogues in the Philosophy of Physics in Warsaw, Poland.
Aug 2026: Luca's paper, The Burden of Fundamentality: Metaphysical Ambiguities and the Issue of Superdeterminism, was accepted at the journal Philosophy of Science. Congratulations to Luca!
July 2026: Luca and Eugene are both presenting papers at the APSA26 conference in Singapore!
July 2026: Luca will be presenting his paper, "Worthless science: against the equivalence of pursuits", at the Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference in Hamilton, New Zealand.
July-August 2026: We are happy to welcome our 2026 cohort of FTG Fellows to NTU in the summer: Lorenzo Lorenzetti (Lugano), Niccolo Covoni (Urbino/Lugano), and Miguel Ohnesorge (Toronto). They will be working with Eugene on a variety of different projects and participating in the FTG 2026 workshop.
Archived News
June 2026: Luca will be presenting his paper, "This is water: the lesson of fundamentality from Newton to Bell's Theorem", at the Foundations of Physics conference in Irvine, California.
May 2026: Eugene was invited to present joint work with Yichen on integrable quantum statistical mechanics and the foundations of quantum thermodynamics at the New Directions in Foundations of Physics conference.
Apr 2026: Eugene will be presenting two talks in Beijing, one at the Chinese Academy of Sciences - Institute of Philosophy on relativistic thermodynamics, and one at Peking University on quantum thermodynamics.
Apr 2026: Luca will be presenting his paper "The Burden of Fundamentality: Metaphysical Ambiguities and the Issue of Superdeterminism" at the BLOC Graduate Conference held in Oxford.
Feb 2026: a paper from Yichen and Eugene, "De-Idealizing De-Idealization: Beyond Full Reversal", was just accepted at the British Journal for Philosophy of Science! Preprint here: https://philpapers.org/rec/LUODDB.
Feb 2026: We are hiring another postdoctoral Research Fellow! Job ad: https://philjobs.org/job/show/30726 (soft deadline 20 Mar 2026).
Jan 2026: our group is joined by Yichen Luo (Research Fellow) and Luca Molinari (PhD Student)!
The 24th Foundations of Physics Conference, Singapore 2027
The 24th Foundations of Physics Conference, Singapore 2027
The Foundations of Thermodynamics Group, in collaboration with the Nanyang Quantum Hub and the School of Humanities at Nanyang Technological University, will be organizing the 24th Foundation of Physics Conference in Singapore, 14-16 July, 2027!
We invite submissions for contributed talks and symposia at Foundations of Physics 2027, to be held at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, from 14 to 16 July 2027.
Foundations 2027 will bring together physicists, philosophers and scholars working in the foundations of physics to share their work, build connections, and explore foundational issues in physics. As the first Foundations of Physics conference to be held in Asia, Foundations 2027 also aims to promote research in the region and connect researchers with the wider international community.
The current slate of keynote speakers includes:
Alexia Auffèves (CNRS, MajuLab, National University of Singapore)
Alexander Blum (Caltech)
Doreen Fraser (University of Waterloo)
Valerio Scarani (National University of Singapore)
All submissions must be made through the submission form on Oxford Abstracts.
The deadline for all submissions is Sunday, 31 January 2027. The Program Committee is co-chaired by Eugene Y. S. Chua and Yichen Luo (NTU).
More details can be found at the conference website: https://www.ntu.edu.sg/soh/news-events/conferences/foundations-of-physics-conference-2027
Foundations of Thermodynamics Workshop Series
Foundations of Thermodynamics Workshop Series
The Foundations of Thermodynamics Group runs an annual workshop series, centered on topics at the conceptual and philosophical foundations of thermodynamics and cognate sciences.
Foundations of Thermodynamics 2027
In 2027 the group will be organizing the third FTG workshop on themes surrounding analogical reasoning and its methodological, epistemic, and conceptual roles in physics. Bringing together philosophers working on various aspects of analogy, we aim to better understand the nature of analogical reasoning across various areas of physics, how it guides the extension of theories beyond their original domains, the positive roles of disanalogies in analogical reasoning, and other aspects of analogy.
Current list of confirmed speakers include:
Doreen Fraser (Waterloo)
Niels Linnemann (Geneva)
Patricia Palacios (Salzburg)
Giovanni Valente (Polimi)
Stephan Hartmann (LMU Munich)
Karen Crowther (Oslo)
Marco Sanchioni (Sophia Institute)
Adam Koberinski (Lund)
Eugene Y. S. Chua (NTU)
Yichen Luo (NTU)
Luca Molinari (NTU)
A Philosophy of Physics Workshop
We organized a one-day workshop in collaboration with colleagues at the National University of Singapore (Isaac Wilhelm, Neil Barton, and Yuang Chen) and visiting professor Jeremy Butterfield (University of Cambridge), to discuss topics ranging from the metaphysics of quantum field theory, perspectivism in mathematics, and quantum reference frames, to black hole thermodynamics, the nature of matter in general relativity, and the metaphysics of scale-relative truth.
Archive of abstracts can be found here.
Foundations of Thermodynamics 2026
In 2026 the group co-organized the second FTG workshop with Miguel Ohnesorge (Toronto) with the theme being a conceptual history of equilibrium and static reasoning. Bringing historians and philosophers of science together, we found a clearer picture of equilibrium and static reasoning, and its role in scientific theorizing -- tracing the idea from Archimedean mechanics, to Newton and the post-Newtonians, classical thermodynamics, early quantum mechanics, general relativity, contemporary quantum many-body physics, biology, and economics.
Talk recordings are available on YouTube here,
Archive of abstracts can be found here.
Foundations of Thermodynamics 2025
In 2025 we hosted our group's first big event, the 2025 Foundations of Thermodynamics workshop. The workshop saw discussions on quantum statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, quasi-local black hole thermodynamics, as well as foundational questions in statistical mechanics.
Talk recordings are available on YouTube here.
Archive of speaker information and abstracts can be found here.
FTG Visiting Fellowships
FTG Visiting Fellowships
The Foundations of Thermodynamics Group welcomes visitors from other academic institutions working on cognate topics, and limited short-term visiting fellowships are available for potential collaborators. Below are our recent FTG Fellows.
Miguel Ohnesorge (Toronto)
July 2026
I am an Assistant Professor of History and Philosophy of Science & Technology at the University of Toronto. My work uses historical methods to answer philosophical questions about science. I am writing a book with Oxford University Press that tells a philosophical history of Newton's theory of particle-to-particle gravitation - its conceptual meaning, mathematical development, and empirical testing in determining the shape and attraction of celestial bodies. My other research explores the foundations of quantitative measurement, as well as related problems in the philosophy of statistics and the political philosophy of socially consequential science.
Lorenzo Lorenzetti (Lugano)
July-August 2026
I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Philosophy at USI (Università della Svizzera italiana), Lugano, Switzerland. Before this, I did my PhD at the University of Bristol. My research areas are philosophy of physics, general philosophy of science, and metaphysics. A central strand of my work concerns inter-theory and inter-scale relations in science, especially reduction in physics. I also work on philosophical and foundational issues in spacetime theories, thermodynamics, and quantum physics, with a particular focus on the ontology of these theories.
Niccolò Covoni (Urbino / Lugano)
July-August 2026
I am a PhD candidate in the Research Methods in Science and Technology programme at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo and at the Institute of Philosophy (ISFI) of Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), Lugano. My research interests lie primarily in the Philosophy of Information, Philosophy of Physics, Metaphysics, and the foundations of quantum theory. My PhD project is supervised by Prof. Claudio Calosi and Prof. Vincenzo Fano. The project aims to develop a formal and philosophical account of information applicable to both macroscopic and microscopic physical systems through an investigation of entropy and its ontological status.
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