It was great to see many of you who attended our Quantum Finance event last Wednesday... And big KUDOs to our very special guests from the College of Business -- Profs. Mich (Assoc Dean), Park (Assoc Dean & Dir of Sch of Hosp & Tour Mgmt), and Schaller (Chr. of QBS) -- whose attendance not only underscored the significance of the subject matter (due to its potential impact on future business and finance), but also lent incredible moral support to what we do at QuantumLeap!
Speaking of which, it was always a pleasant surprise to have (astrophysics) Prof. Rengstorf (Chr of Chem & Phys) drop in from his busy orbit or orbital (depending on the observational scale, I guess). Furthermore, I was as flattered as I was appreciative that our own advisor Prof. Yang (Chr of CS) managed to squeeze every moment she had in between her meetings/calls to participate in our 2.5-hr program.
In terms of another event in December, it doesn't now seem likely that the originally-envisioned meeting in association with a visit from CQE (Chicago Quantum Exchange) will materialize before the semester is over. That said, however, we can perhaps do a casual meet-up over a study-/pizza-break to strategize and plan for our activities for the Spring semester (and then spring forward from there...)
The goal is to jump-start a series of 'deeper diving' activities -- that is, in addition to the informative, awareness-building events for the larger campus community -- in order to help those committed students learn more about QIST (Quantum Information Sci & Tech) and develop associated skills.
These may include, for example, tutorials, workshops and/or labs in Quantum Computing (QC), which will in turn set them up for national competitions (for example, I've spoken to our counterpart at Yale and expressed our interest in participating in their QC hachathon in April), as well as research and/or corporate internships/externships across the nation (we will be working on those down the road for sure).
They will help us fulfill the last two objectives of our mission to "inform, educate and enable the students".
Please let me know what you think or if you have any questions/comments/suggestions.
To be continued...
Shawn
PS - I believe the two speakers' presentations on Wednesday were recorded. If you are interested in watching it, please drop me a note and I shall try and get a link from our partner at UIC.