Gingras wants to know how the presence of weak random disorder affects the thermodynamic properties of real materials. What type of phases do they exhibit, and what are their low-temperature physical properties? Sometimes a small amount of disorder can have dramatic effects on the thermodynamic behaviour of a material. For example, strong experimental and theoretical evidence indicates that weak disorder leads to novel and exotic types of high temperature superconductors.

When Gingras was in grade 12 in Quebec City, he and a group of friends tried to build a CO2 laser during lunch hours. They transferred the CO2 and nitrogen with garbage bags! "I now wonder how we didn't get electrocuted by the high voltage source," says Gingras, but he remembers it was fun. The farthest they ever got was to build a bizarre-looking, water-cooled fluorescent tube that never reached threshold for lasing. In another one of his teenage experiments he mixed together sugar and bleach and the whole thing boiled over in an exothermic reaction. Gingras says, "I pride myself on having discovered this chemical reaction in my parents' basement!"