On 1st of October the Series of QBN Meetings on Quantum Sensing kicked-off successfully. The first meeting of the working group with the focus on diamond quantum sensing brought together leading science and industry experts from the entire value chain. Filtering the hype, the QBN meeting had a high quality in terms of content and participants.
Attracted by a full day meeting with an outstanding lineup and luminaries in the field of quantum sensing, the QBN Meeting gathered many scientists and representatives of SMEs and global companies from different application domains like automotive, telecommunications, defense and security as well as healthcare and industrial metrology.
After the welcoming words of Johannes Verst, founder and CEO of the Quantum Business Network, Prof. Dr. Oliver Ambacher, Director of Fraunhofer IAF, which supported this QBN Meeting significantly, introduced the extensive diamond quantum sensing research.
The first key note ‘Quantum Sensors – from Concept to Market’ by Robert Rölver from Robert Bosch GmbH gave valuable insights into the current development portfolio of this global player. Prof. Dr. Jörg Wrachtrup from University of Stuttgart, pioneer and leading expert in diamond quantum sensing impressed in his key note ‘Quantum sensors with on-board quantum computer’ with the concept of even better sensors.
With the great input and contribution of the participants in the application workshop we are able to provide the quantum sensing community a basis for business development. After the preparation of the workshop results and identifying matches of offers and requests, QBN will introduce potential partners to initiate collaborative technology and business projects.
It was a great fun to speed network in several face-to-face rounds of 5 minutes each with known and unknown people and find starting points for further discussions and partnerships. You cannot overestimate the power of networking, which only shifts to other platforms and is even more important during the current crises.
The focus session on diamond quantum sensing started with the brilliant talk ‘NV Magnetometry for Medical Technology, Neurology, Micro/Nano Electronics and Material Science’ held by Dr. Jan Jeske, Fraunhofer IAF. Right after Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Jürgen Hennig, University Medical Center Freiburg gave inspiring impulses for potential applications of diamond quantum sensing in medical diagnostics in his talk ‘Opportunities and Challenges for Quantum Sensing in Magnetic Resonance Imaging’. Dr. Friedemann Reinhard, Technical University of Munich with his talk ‘Electronic integration of quantum sensors‘ highlighted and underpinned the importance of robustness, miniaturization and integration to enable applications in industry.
The start-up pitches ‘Quantum to the network edge: NVs for mobile, distributed and parallel quantum computing’, Dr Andrew Horsley, Quantum Brilliance, ‘Industrial Quantum Technology’, Dr. Michael Förtsch, Q.ANT GmbH, ‘Sensing and making sense of the very small’, Felipe Favaro de Oliveira, Qnami AG and ‘New data made visible with scanning NV’, Dr. Gabriel Puebla-Hellmann, Qzabre LL demonstrate, that quantum sensing is already useable and right on track in terms of commercialization.
At our virtual roundtable, in which all participants of the QBN Meeting were welcome to join there was an agreement that for quantum sensing, there is no hype needed compared to quantum computing. As Quantum Sensors collect the data from our environment which will be processed by computers, sensors might not have the same attention in the broad public as quantum computers have but are as important. That´s why we have to increase the awareness and visibility of quantum sensing in politics and for potential customers. An equally great significance are the promotion entrepreneurship and encouraging science and industry to speed up the technology transfer and commercialization.
Special thanks to all attendees not only for their open and very valuable contribution but also for making the 1st QBN Meeting on Quantum Sensing to a high-quality meeting with a trust-based environment for knowledge exchange and collaboration.
The presentations, participants list and workshop results of every QBN Meeting will be available exclusively for QBN members in the internal member area on the QBN website.
We are looking very much forward to the next QBN Meetings on Quantum Sensing and the QBN Meetings on the other fields of quantum technology.
