Closing 2016 at CQT with celebrations of science and staff

The Centre marked its 9th birthday and presented staff awards at end-of-year events

Find more photographs from CQT's Annual Symposium on our Facebook page.

On 7 December CQT turned 9 years old. As is the Centre's tradition, we celebrated our birthday with a scientific symposium, hearing from two distinguished guest speakers.

The guest speakers for "The famous, the bit and the quantum" symposium were Edward Farhi from MIT, who spoke on "The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm: A Good Choice to Run on a Near Term Quantum Computer" and Markus Arndt from the University of Vienna who gave a talk titled "From quantum philosophy to quantum technology". Videos of their talks will be available in future on CQT's YouTube channel.

On 8 December, we turned to celebrating our staff. CQT hosted an event for its members and guests, presenting awards including the CQTian award for contributions to the centre's community. There were performances by CQTians, with PhD students Jirawat Tangpanitanon performing a guitar solo and Jaren Gan leading a quantum choir in carolling.

Certificates of appreciation were presented to members of CQT's Fire and Safety Committees. Researchers who had made signficant contributions to outreach were named Outreach Ambassadors, and last but not least, four CQTian Awards were presented to staff chosen after an open call for nominations.

There were many more people put forward for CQTian Awards than could be recognised with prizes, which is a good sign for the Centre and for next year's prizes. Congratulations to this year's four deserving winners!

CQTian Award 2016

	Brenda Chng "for her dedication to making CQT's laboratories run smoothly and safely, and for her generosity in offering support and guidance to others"
	Jamie Sikora "for creating community spirit by initiating weekly games evenings and bringing CQTians together to teach a workshop for high school students"
	Lim Ah Bee "for keeping our untidiness in check and our plants in good health, always with good humour"
	Evon Tan "for always going beyond what is required to get things done – and doing them with speed, professionalism and good judgement"