AQET seminars offer students exposure to broad range of disciplines

Over the winter quarter, QuantumX’s Accelerated Quantum Engineering and Technology (AQET) students met with and learned from leading engineers and scientists in the quantum information field. Speakers from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and a wide variety of other institutions gave students a fresh perspective on their research, emerging technologies, and possible career paths. 

Audrey in Santiago Chile

AQET Scholar Q&A with Audrey Budlong

As a high school student, Bellevue, WA native Audrey Budlong was a Running Start Student, a program with Bellevue College allowing high school juniors and seniors to earn college credits at the same time as high school credits. The program helped her earn an Associate of Science degree in Physics, Engineering and Atmospheric Science at the same time as she earned her high school diploma in 2019. The early exposure to STEM fields and research helped her pick a major in physics at UW and drove her to pursue quantum information science. She’s currently a second-year physics graduate student and an Accelerating Quantum Engineering and Technology (AQET) Fellow [link] in QuantumX.

Center for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (CQIQC) Conference

The Center for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (CQIQC) at the University of Toronto, and the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences are hosting a conference August 26-30. It will continue the tradition of highlighting excellence and innovation in quantum research, as well as fostering collaboration within the quantum community worldwide. The full list of speakers is available on the conference website.  

CEI ANNOUNCES COLLABORATIVE SEED GRANTS

Quantum computers have the potential to play a key role in achieving a clean energy future. For example, quantum computing could fast-track the development of new materials and processes for ultra-efficient energy production and storage. However, building a useful quantum computer is extremely difficult — it is not even currently clear which materials are best for creating quantum bits (qubits). To address this grand challenge, project co-PIs Matthew Yankowitz, Xiaodong Xu, Di Xiao, and Ting Cao propose an entirely new approach towards building topological qubits based upon atomically-thin “van der Waals” materials. Xu, Xiao, and Cao recently discovered rare quantum properties in stacked, slightly misaligned two-dimensional sheets of the semiconductor molybdenum ditelluride. These materials can be coupled with vdW superconductors to create unique particles with fractional electronic charges, known as parafermions, which if harnessed could be the backbone of a device for storing and processing quantum information.

University of Washington team detects atomic ‘breathing’ for quantum computing breakthrough

Most of us don’t think of atoms as having their own unique vibrations, but they do. In fact, it’s a feature so fundamental to nature’s building blocks that a team of University of Washington researchers recently observed and used this phenomenon in their research study. By studying the light atoms emitted when stimulated by a laser, they were able to detect vibrations sometimes referred to as atomic “breathing.”