Students and Faculty Gather for First ECQI Retreat

The ECQI Interdisciplinary Quantum Dialogue retreat was hosted early this Fall at Asilomar Conference Grounds, to bring together a group of students, post-docs, and faculty from quantum-inflected departments at UCSB and give them an opportunity to present their work and learn about tools and ideas crossing the standard sub-field boundaries. The two-day retreat--hosted in Pacific Grove, California--featured short talks from students and faculty, a poster session, a mixed group brainstorming session, and plenty of casual opportunities to hang out and get to know neighbors who are otherwise often hidden away in their myriad dark and mysterious laboratory habitats!

The ECQI retreat represented a unique opportunity for creative cross-disciplinary engagement. Faculty, students, and postdocs from condensed matter theory and experiment, materials science, engineering, and atomic physics gathered for a two-day scientific program of discussion-heavy presentations and posters and a notably creative and varied brainstorming session. 

Just in that single session, which rotated faculty among small groups of junior researchers, participants took part in discussions of a wide variety of topics, including the fundamental relationship between quantum interactive matter and quantum sensing, the possibilities for a machine-learning-derived optimal exchange-correlation functional, strategies for loss mitigation in hybrid devices, related forms of anomalous localization in cold atoms and van der Waals heterostructures, and a reimagining of the targets for superconductivity research. The decontextualization associated with a remote retreat, the beauty of the surroundings, and a well-organized program specifically designed by students and postdocs to maximize opportunities for inter-group intellectual engagement combined to create a memorable and fruitful experience.