BQIT:18 - Day Two

QTEC's Andy Collins opens the second day of BQIT with his industry session talk

The second day of the Bristol Quantum Information Technologies Workshop was yet another day of
golden sunshine and intriguing discussions. Talks ranged from industry perspectives and future funding to solid state systems and quantum dots, as well as a poster session generously sponsored by KETS covering broad directions of academic research.

The morning proceedings began with talks on industry activity over the past year. Andrew Collins from the University of Bristol's Quantum Technology and Enterprise Centre (QTEC) spoke about some of the highs and lows of quantum startups, busting some myths and ending with a call for people to take part in the upcoming Quantum Start Up Week this July. Next was Zurich Instruments' Jelena Trbovic, highlighting how their amplifiers and arbitrary waveform generators can be used for fast characterising and control of superconducting qubits. And before breaking for coffee, Luke Dandy & Cris Quintana from Airbus discussed the ongoing QDOS project, a £1.3million collaboration between Airbus, the University of Bristol, KETS and the University of Oxford, looking toward realising quantum key distribution with drones.

Following coffee, the second session started with the University of Bristol's Mustafa Rampuri speaking about the Quantum Technology Innovation Centre (QTIC), a business accelerator to support quantum technologies leaving universities and entering the marketplace, with a pilot site opening this summer and the full facility in Q3 2021. John Azariah, lead of the Q# development language at Microsoft, ended the morning by introducing the Quantum Development Kit and Q# language, highlighting several features including a built-in simulator of 35 qubits as well as a simulator on Microsoft Azure.

After lunch, a more detailed interactive tutorial showed off more features of the Q# language, including an entanglement & teleportation demonstration as well as broader software engineering. Running parallel to this was the BQIT poster session, sponsored by KETS, where 18 researchers highlighted their recent work. Of particular note is Carmen Palacios Berraquero from the University of Cambridge, who won the poster prize for her work on deterministic single photon sources on a chip. Stasja Stanisic and Felipe Ortiz-Huerta, both from the University of Bristol, walked away with honourable mentions for their posters.

QET Labs student and BQIT blogger Jeremy Adcock chats with IOP QST reps - one of this year's event sponsors

BQIT poster session winner Carmen Palacios Berraquero presents her work

 The afternoon proceedings began with Liam Blackwell from the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council, who discussed the current status of the UK National Quantum Technology Programme, as well as the proposal for Phase Two of the programme. Niccolo Somaschi from the Center of Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies spinoff Quandela then led the discussion into solid state systems by presenting their products which use quantum dots as single photon sources.

Quantum dots was the focus for the rest of the day's proceedings. Mete Atature from the University of Cambridge presented their group's work on developing networks of interconnected solid-state spins. University of Science and Technology China's Yuhao Deng showed off how quantum dots are used as single photon sources for Boson Sampling. And finally, Andrew Young from the University of Bristol gave a whistlestop tour of the current work and challenges in their lab.

A bright and sunny day with bright and engaging speakers, the second day of BQIT drew to a close
with drinks, dinner and a guided tour on board Isambard Kingdom Brunel's SS Great Britain.

BQIT's day two dinner venue

Delegates enjoying the sunshine (and bubbles!) aboard the SS Great Britain

Further information on this year's workshop can be found on our website

For photos of BQIT:18 please visit our Flickr page

Videos of all of our talks from the workshop will be available on our Youtube channel

For information on upcoming events, or for more information and queries please email us at bqit-admin@bristol.ac.uk

 This year's BQIT blogs were written by QET Labs and Quantum Engineering CDT students Jeremy Adcock and Alex Moylett.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Outreach Training Day

Image
New students means new opportunities to get out of the lab and teaching the public about the weird world of quantum technology. But first, we need to show everyone what demos we have available. This afternoon, we invited the whole group to see what our engagement cupboard has to offer. Euan Allen showing some of our new(ish) CDT students how to use our Galton Box. Seasoned veterans through to those new to public engagement joined us to get hands on with our demos. Everything from hand held busking demos to more technical demos was on offer to have a play with. Everyone pitched in to find out what is on offer. Sam Morley-Short and Stasja   Stanisic building some origami microscopes With everyone well trained in how to operate our kit, watch out for us at the next science festival and join us to learn more about quantum mechanics! What's that up there? Some of our CDT students getting hands on with our spectrometers.
Read more

Science for a Successful Nation 2018

Image
The outreach team were once again invited out of the lab and on an early morning training to London to present the latest and greatest in quantum engineering. After an early morning start, and accidental seat reservation in the quiet carriage, we arrived at the Royal Society to take part EPSRC's Science for a Successful Nation 2018. The event aims to showcase EPSRC's investments and demonstrate their social, cultural and economic impacts. Bristol University was well represented with stands from the Bristol Robotics Laboratory and the Jean Golding Institute. In amongst the exhibits were students from the Quantum Engineering CDT and QETLabs demonstrating the importance of data encryption in a connected society. By showing how readily data can be intercepted on network, it is easily seen that we need to invest in data security to ensure it's remains secure in the near future. The event was well attended by EPSRC representatives and industrial partners.
Read more

BQIT:18 - Day Three

Image
TU Delft and KTH's Val Zwiller opens day three of BQIT Bristol awoke in a thick fog on Friday morning, but by the time the first session was in full swing, we were back under the glorious BQIT sunshine, looking down on the harbourside from our venue, MShed. Kicking off the day was Val Zwiller of TU Delft & KTH Stockholm, giving a history and outlook for superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDS), with an emphasis on the importance of time resolution - photon purity will appear much reduced if measured without appropriate time resolution! QET Labs' Dondu Sahin followed up with Bristol's plans for near unity efficiency, ring-coupled SNSPDs, which have the added bonus of precise wavelength tunability, and Anthony Laing (also from QET Labs), with his talk on photonic simulations of molecular quantum dynamics. In the next session, "Quantum Communications and Networks", Xiao Yuan presented University of Oxford's latest quantum algorithm
Read more