The winners of IOP Publishing's International Quantum Technology 'young scientist' and 'emerging researcher' awards have been announced.
The awards, which received nearly 50 nominations, were introduced to recognise and support scientific excellence and development of quantum technology researchers at the early stages of their career. The judging panel selected the winners based upon their significant achievements and exceptional promise for future contributions in the field.
The winners were announced at a live-streamed ceremony which marked the closing of the Quantum 2020 conference, hosted by IOP Publishing and the Institute of Physics (IOP) in partnership with the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and the Chinese Physical Society (CPS). The conference brought together nearly 4500nearly 4500 researchers from across the globe from industry, academia and government to discuss some of the most cutting-edge directions in quantum science and technology.
The two individual winners are:
International Quantum Technology Young Scientist Award
Hannes Bernien, University of Chicago, USA
Hannes Bernien's contributions to quantum science and technology have had a transformational impact across the field. He was nominated for "the development of methods to control quantum systems over long distances and scaling them to large qubit numbers.
Highly commended in this category:
- Philipp Hauke, University of Trento, Itay
- Joel Wallman, University of Waterloo, Canada
- Erez Zohar, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
- Chen Wang, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA
International Quantum Technology Emerging Researcher Award
Nicole Yunger Halpern, Harvard University, USA
Nicole is a theorist who works at the interface of quantum information science, AMO physics, and condensed matter physics. Nicole was nominated for "far-reaching theoretical contributions spanning quantum thermodynamics, quantum information scrambling, quantum metrology, and the foundations of quantum theory."
Highly commended in this category:
- Mario Krenn, University of Toronto and the Vector Institute, Canada
- Giacomo Torlai, Flatiron Institute in New York, USA
- Sylvain de Leseleuc National Institutes of Natural Sciences, Myodaiji, Japan
- Steven Touzard, National University of Singapore
- Marin Bukov, University of Sofia, Bulgaria
Dr Tim Smith, associate director at IOP Publishing and member of the judging panel said: "My congratulations go to our winners who have both demonstrated significant contributions to quantum physics as they open up new ideas with their innovative and inspiring proposals. As two hugely talented quantum scientists, and the first recipients of these major awards, they have certainly set a very high bar for future years!
"The Quantum 2020 conference was an exciting four days, delivering a great mix of inspiring plenaries, educational panel sessions and networking opportunities, with time to acknowledge the contributions of early career researchers through these new Quantum Technology awards."
Professor Chao-Yang Lu, from USTC and chair of the Quantum 2020 organising committee said: "These awards are an important way to celebrate the achievements and contributions of the next generation of scientists and I'm delighted for Nicole and Hannes. It has to be said that the calibre of the entries was outstanding, which is why we felt it right to highly commend many of those nominated so that their contributions would not go unnoticed.
"It has been an honour to help make Quantum 2020 a reality - we couldn't have imagined a more successful inaugural conference."
