EQUS Annual Workshop 2022 round-up!

The 2022 EQUS Annual Workshop, the first whole-of-Centre in-person event in three years, was held in Newcastle, NSW, in December 2022.  The workshop was attended by 140 of our members, including students, early-career researchers, Chief Investigators and our operations team.  We were also lucky enough to have EQUS Scientific Advisory Committee members Professor Sir Peter Knight, Professor Rainer Blatt and Professor John Clarke in attendance, along with two of our keynote speakers, Professor Alexia Auffèves and Professor Yvonne Gao.  Highlights of the workshop included:

• Invited talks by Professor Alexia Auffèves (CNRS MajuLab), Lisa Annese (Chief Executive Officer of Diversity Council Australia ), Assistant Professor Yvonne Gao (National University of Singapore) and Dr Jess Wade (Imperial College)
• Research and portfolio updates from 26 EQUS members
• Pitch, poster and three-minute thesis competitions
• Awarding of EQUS prizes

Professor Alexia Auffèves is Research Director at the CNRS International Research Lab MajuLab (Singapore) and an EQUS Partner Investigator.  In her keynote, Alexia presented the recently launched Quantum Energy Initiative (https://quantum-energy-initiative.org), which aims to develop a holistic understanding of the energetic footprint and efficiencies of quantum technologies.  To consider these impacts the Quantum Energy Initiative has established a transverse, interdisciplinary and international research line connecting quantum thermodynamics, quantum information science, quantum physics and engineering.  The goal is to create the conditions for energy-efficient, sustainable quantum technologies, and possibly create a quantum advantage of energetic nature.  

Lisa Annese, CEO of Diversity Council Australia, delivered a keynote on diversity and inclusion (D&I) in the workplace and the ability for effective D&I policies and strategies to retain a satisfied workforce resulting in greater profitability, innovation and organisational performance.

Dr Yvonne Gao is a Principal Investigator in the Centre for Quantum Technologies and Presidential Young Professor in the Department of Physics at the National University of Singapore.  Yvonne’s presentation—Quantum information processing with bosonic modes: a story of cats, cavities and coherence—explored how stored multiphoton states are promising candidates for long-lived quantum memories and for logical qubits that can be protected against environmental noise. 

Dr Jess Wade, a Research Fellow from the Department of Materials, Imperial College London, shared her research on chiral molecular materials and their potential to offer a more sustainable and efficient solution for preparing, controlling, storing and reading-out quantum states.  Jess also shared the many science communication, outreach activities and diversity initiatives she has been involved in, and why she believes it is the responsibility of STEM researchers to take an active role in trying to address the many inequities that exist in the current academic workforce.

The workshop also provided the opportunity to hear from each of the 21 EQUS research projects and five portfolio committees.  EQUS students and early-career researchers also had the opportunity to share their research in a poster or three-minute thesis (3MT) format, or to pitch their research to hypothetical investors Associate Professor Jacqui Romero (UQ), Professor Kirk McKenzie (ANU) and Professor Tom Stace (UQ).  Prizes were awarded to the top presenters in each category.

The awards dinner was another highlight of the workshop, providing the Centre Executive with an opportunity to acknowledge the outstanding performance of our members and recognise the contributions they make to EQUS.

2022 EQUS Awards

The recipients of the 2022 EQUS Awards are as follows.

Director’s Medal: Jeremy Bourhill

The Director’s Medal is presented to a researcher who not only exhibits the spirit of collaborative enquiry required to advance research in quantum physics but also goes above and beyond to assist with service activities within the Centre.

Jeremy Bourhill is a Research Fellow in the Quantum Technologies and Dark Matter Laboratory at UWA.  His research focuses on spin ensembles in solids and novel microwave techniques to interact with them for the purposes of designing quantum protocols.  Jeremy is also interested in designing and constructing new experiments to search for dark matter that will circumvent many of the current hurdles facing the global effort.  Jeremy is a 2022–23 EQUS Node Representative and an active mentor and supervisor of EQUS students.  He became a Mental Health First Aid Officer to better support his colleagues at the UWA Node and participated in the 2022 National Quantum & Dark Matter Road Trip.

Centre Citizen: Tim Hirsch

The Centre Citizen award is presented to the EQUS member who best represents the aspirations of the Centre through their passion and commitment to the Centre’s culture.

Tim Hirsch is a PhD student in the Quantum Optics Laboratory at UQ, where his research aims to develop a nanomechanical computing architecture, which uses mechanical vibrations (phonons) instead of electricity to store and transmit information.  The motivation behind this research is to create a computer with high radiation tolerance and low energy consumption.  Tim is a 2022–23 EQUS Node Representative, and a member of two EQUS committees.  As a member of the EQUS Public Engagement Committee, Tim was part of the 2022 National Quantum & Dark Matter Road Trip, is on the Quantum Art Competition sub-committee and is the EQUS judge for the 2023 Quantum Shorts Film Festival.  As a member of the EQUS EQUIP Committee, Tim was an integral part of the inaugural inSTEM Conference, both as a member of the organising committee and the conference event crew.

Best Student-Led Project: Emily Rose Rees, Andrew Wade and Andrew Sutton, for their work developing a technique to readout the laser frequency needed for the next GRACE mission.  Working closely with CEA Technologies and NASA–JPL they demonstrated the technique at the JPL campus in Pasadena in October 2022.  The project has resulted in two journal articles.

Best Student-Led Paper: Mark Webster, for his paper on the XP stabiliser formalism.  Besides creating a new class of quantum stabiliser codes, the paper has techniques for better understanding existing codes.

Best Collaborative Paper: Aaron Quiskamp, Ben McAllister, Paul Altin, Eugene Ivanov, Maxim Goryachev and Mike Tobar, for The ORGAN Experiment—Australia’s first major contribution to dark matter detection.

Best Profile-Raising Activity: the inSTEM Conference, conceived by the EQUS EQUIP Committee and led by EQUS in its inaugural year, brought together 150 early-to-mid-career researchers from underrepresented and marginalised groups in STEM to network and hear from leading experts on topics and strategies that support career development and progression.

Best Contribution to Public Debate: Tara Roberson, for her leadership in responsible innovation, and research concerned with the responsible development and use of quantum technologies.

Poster competition:

• First place: Simeon Simjanovski
• Equal second place: Cory Aitchison and Vanessa Olaya Agudelo
• Third place: Ali Fawaz

Three-minute thesis competition:

• First place: Christophe Valahu
• Second place: Lirandë Pira
• Third place: Ben Field

Pitch competition:

• First place: Kyle Clunies-Ross

Congratulations to our award winners, and to all EQUS members for making 2022 another very successful year for the Centre!