UK National Quantum Technologies Showcase
Last Friday 7th November, the IQN Hub joined leading innovators and researchers at the UK National Quantum Technologies Showcase in London’s Business Design Centre. Hosted by Innovate UK, the event welcomed over 3000 visitors keen to explore the latest breakthroughs in quantum science and technology. Our IQN team had an extremely positive and busy day, connecting with companies, investors and other academics, sharing their work on cutting-edge quantum innovations.
Throughout the day, we welcomed hundreds of visitors to our stand, showcasing demonstrations of the science and technology behind all six of our research themes:
- Quantum memories
- Dynamic networking and entanglement distribution
- Quantum communications in space
- Quantum components
- Quantum protocols and networking theory
- Quantum-safe secure communication & standards
Our Director, Gerald Buller took part in an extremely popular session in the morning to discuss the UK’s five Quantum Technology Hubs – highlighting their new capabilities and how they will deliver societal impact and economic growth for the UK.
He discussed how the development of new quantum memories and interconnects through the IQN Hub will allow the distribution of entanglement across long distances, supporting the development of next-generation quantum information networks. This will integrate many of the Hub’s other hardware outputs and will be designed to be compatible with existing telecommunication/data infrastructure to facilitate widespread national-scale deployment.
The IQN Hub’s co-investigator, Christopher Chunnilall from the National Physical Laboratory, then joined industry representatives for a wide-ranging panel session that covered topics such as nurturing commercialisation and how to encourage the next generation of quantum researchers.
A key driver of each Hub’s success is its collaboration with a wide range of leading industry partners; we were delighted to meet many of the IQN Hub’s on the day to discuss how we can continue to deliver real impact together.
