ML4Q&A - from the lives of quantum physicists ML4Q Cluster of Excellence

In this episode Chris introduces Mira Sharma, his co-host of the show. Mira is a PhD student at IQI in David DiVincenzo's group. This is their first co-hosted episode, so it is an experiment.
For today’s episode Chris and Mira left the cluster bubble on a roadtrip to Siegen where they met Christof Wunderlich. Before recording, they were able to visit Christof's lab where it was fascinating to see the ion traps and have an interactive introduction to trapped ion QC. They also visited EleQtron, Germany’s first QC start-up.

In this episode Chris talks to Gláucia Murta, a postdoc in ML4Q, who was won the cluster's Young Investigator Award. They talk about Gláucia’s passion for fundamental questions, device independence and a great outreach project, the podcast O Q Quantico she just launched in her home country, Brazil.

In this episode Chris talks to Julian Schmitt, leader of the junior research group “Quantum fluids of light” at the University of Bonn. Julian recently received an ERC Starting Grant, the ML4Q Independence Grant and in 2022 he was awarded the ML4Q Young Investigator Award honoring his contribution to the cluster’s program which particularly requires the collaboration between different sites.
They talk about Bose-Einstein condensates and the differences between the atomic and the photonic sort. They recap how Julian got into the atomic molecular and optical physics (AMO) research community where major breakthroughs often seem to be possible already with relatively small teams.
They also chat about how optical quantum gases can shed new light on exciting open questions in physics, such as grand canonical condensates or the interplay between quantum physics and thermodynamics.

In this episode Chris talks to Steven Koester, Professor of Nanotechnology in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota. Steve - who is our first external guest on the podcast - is joining us mainly as the Director of the Global Quantum Leap program – a network of networks including ML4Q - which provides an essential linkage between the fields of nanofabrication and quantum information sciences on an international level.
They talk about his electrical engineering background, how he got a first taste of quantum devices during his Masters studies at Notre Dame, eventually leading to his PhD work on indium arsenide. They also discuss his industry experience working at IBM.
But as a main topic, he introduces the Global Quantum Leap program and the cultural exchange it fosters in order to tackle big global challenges as in the field of quantum computing.

In this episode, Chris talks to Erwann Bocquillon, ML4Q professor at the 2nd Institute of Physics at the University of Cologne who started his group in October 2021. They talk about Erwann’s educational and research journey touching upon differences between studying physics in France and Germany. They also discuss electron quantum optics and learn about Erwann’s best memory from his PhD time.

In this episode, we talk to David DiVincenzo, Director of the Institute of Theoretical Nanoelectronics at Forschungszentrum Jülich & co-founder of the Institute for Quantum Information which is a joint institute of RWTH Aachen and the Forschungszentrum. We start by listening to David's take on different aspects of the fast developments in the field of quantum computing. Then, we take a deep dive into the mid eighties and early ninties and discuss how David started working on quantum computing before Shor’s algorithm and quantum error correction were discovered. Naturally then, him and his collaborators at IBM were ready to contribute to the developing field. We touch upon the DiVincenzo criteria and the Loss-DiVincenzo quantum dot proposal and get to know some of the mentors David was lucky to have had.