Author: Stefan Kubsky
Report on the satellite-event organised by the EPS Technology and Innovation Group (EPS TIG) during the Balkan Physical Unions’ Congress BPU-12, held in Bucharest from 9th to 10th July 2025.
At the BPU-12 congress, the EPS’ TIG group organised and performed its 5th hands-on event: “Frontiers of Quantum Technologies”. Two industrial partners could be won and were active: KwanTek from France and SaxonQ from Germany.
Some 30 students -mostly from the Balkan region- gathered the event, which started by a vivid presentation on career options for students, both in academia and industry, given by Petra Rudolf from the Netherlands. The students asked questions and there was a bilateral discussion going on. After the lunchbreak, Jan Meijer from the Felix Bloch Institute of the University of Leipzig and co-founder of SaxonQ company gave a detailed, yet comprehensible, insight into the field of quantum computing using NV- centres in diamond as Qbits. The highlight of the talk was a short live demonstration of a simple quantum operation, on a remote table-top QC at Leipzig, running the NV- centres as Qubits at RT.
Subsequently, Stefan Kubsky started the hands-on part with an in-depth presentation on how to use NV- centres as quantum magnetometers. After this, the students were divided into workgroups, each responsible for a defined subtask, but all with the final aim to get the experiment up, working, produce data, analyse them and finally present them. KwanTek company sent its quantum educational platform « KwanTeach » together with the physicist Zohaib Khan, in order to optimise the built-up of the experimental setup. This is the special format of EPS TIG hands-on events: New exciting and timely experiments with and for the students. After several hours, the students had managed all the above tasks and presented their work to all the audience.
The second day was filled up by two detailed visits, the NIMP institute and ELI, both impressive institutes. The lab-tours were well organised and left enough space for all our questions.
Students gave substantial positive feedback in the sense that they felt that this experiment was specially designed for them, on purpose and that they understood some new and modern physics to take home.
The organisers do have a congruent impression, the interplay of the actors went smoothly and was balanced. The organisers therefore regard the event as a success. The images below illustrate this mood in a fine way.
