NZ first in the world to commemorate the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology

19 February, 2025

Aotearoa New Zealand was the first place in the world to commemorate the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ). We kicked off the public celebrations for IYQ with the MacDiarmid Institute public lecture on 15 January: 'A Century of Quantum Mechanics: How 100 Years of Quantum Mechanics changed our perspective on reality.'

University of Illinois theoretical physicist Professor Gordon Baym spoke about his part in the history of the world’s most successful and mysterious description of reality, drawing on his expertise in condensed matter, the physics of elementary particles, and the formation of neutron stars in supernova explosions. And his fellow University of Illinois colleague Professor Smitha Vishveshwara then described how advances in quantum physics have required imaginative leaps, and in turn have inspired creative works.

The public lecture took place as part of the ‘ICAM Week of Science 2025’ (convened by the MacDiarmid Institute in Wellington, 13-17 January). The ICAM (Institute for Complex and Adaptive Matter) conference convened an exceptional group of scientists from across the globe discussing emergent behaviours at the frontiers of soft matter and quantum materials.

An exceptional group of scientists from across the globe discussing emergent behaviours at the frontiers of soft matter and quantum materials

The ICAM Week of Science was directly followed by the ‘Quantum Materials Summer School’ (also held in Wellington, 18-19 January), with invited speakers on Scanning Tunneling Microscopy of Quantum Materials, Quantum Information, Topological and Strongly Correlated Materials, and other major topics of current research focus in quantum materials.

Invited speakers for the ICAM Week of Science and the Quantum Materials Summer School included:

Ehud Altman (UC Berkeley)
Sami Al-Izzi (U New South Wales)
Gordon Baym (UIUC)
Justin Burton (Emory U)
Doug Brumley (Melbourne U)
Philip Brydon (Dunedin)
Anthony Carrington (Bristol University)
Chung Hou Chung (National Chiao Tung University)
Alejandro Fainstein (Bariloche)
Rosario Fazio (ICTP Trieste)
Michael Fuhrer (Monash)
Sriram Ganeshan (CUNY)
Laura Greene (Florida State University)
Pablo Jarillo Herrero (MIT)
Na Ji (UC Berkeley)
Jianping Hu (IOP, Beijing)
Etienne Lantagne-Hurtubise (Caltech)
Oleg Lavrentovic (Kent State)
Vidya Madhavan (UIUC)
Jenny Malmstrom (Auckland University)
Cristina Marchetti (UC Santa Barbara)
Allan Macdonald (UT, Austin)
Suchitra Sebastian (Cambridge)
Z. X. Shen (Stanford)
Ceclie Sykes (École Normale Supérieure)
Joachim Brand (Massey)
Ali Yazdani (Princeton)
Geoff Willmott (Auckland University)
Xing-Jiang Zhou (IOP, Beijing)