TQT’s Quantum Opportunities and Showcase was held on October 20. This year we saw the quantum community come together with a particular focus on health. The event kicked of with a TQT update including recent developments of The Quantum Colaboratory, followed by a quantum showcase that included posters, demonstrations and lab tours. Several recipients received the best poster award as follows: Christopher Wyenberg, Burak Tekcan, and Matthew Day. TQT congratulates the poster winners and thanks the poster judging panel led by Na Young Kim, with Subha Kalyaanamoorthy and Guo-Xing Miao.
The afternoon featured the theme of Quantum for Health (Q4Health), with remarks from Vivek Goel, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Waterloo, Nipun Vats, Assistant Deputy Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and David Cory, Principal Investigator, TQT. This was followed by the Q4Health Pitch Competition, which saw nineteen teams competing for the best pitch awards as part of the Q4Health Design Challenge. The following top ten teams were awarded $1,000 to develop their ideas further:
- Home Quantum Measurement of Urine QuLoo: Saba Sadeghi, Peter Sprenger, Jiahui Chen & Dmitry Akhmetzyanov
- Quantum Dots Illuminating Pathology: Dusan Sarenac, Dmitry Pushin, & Jelena Mirkovic
- Improving X-Ray Energy Deposition via Multiphoton Absorption: Christopher Wyenberg & Parth Padia
- High-precision imaging of tumors using undetected photons: Kent Ueno & Anastasiia Mashko
- Entangled Vision: Quantum Tools for Retinal Diagnostics: Dusan Sarenac, Dmitry Pushin, Ben Thompson & Connor Kapahi
- Detecting male infertility by magnetic resonance of sperm: Veronika Magdanz, Fatemeh Fani Sani & Peter Sprenger
- Quantum Imaging of Human Retina: Dusan Sarenac, Ben Thompson & Mukhit Kulmaganbetovs
- Mental Health Evaluation Based on Quantum Brain Mapping: Fatemeh Fani Sani & Steph Beynon
- Quantum Enabled Neutron Therapy: Melissa Henderson & Dusan Sarenac
- Therapeutic dose monitoring for cancer treatment: Sathursan Kokilathasan, Jack DeGooyer, Lucas Roy & Sarah Odinotski
After the event, the remaining teams that presented at the pitch competition also received a Q4Health Emerging Idea award as an incentive to further their ideas. TQT is particularly grateful to the following sponsors who made these awards possible: Ambature, Angstrom Engineering, Anyon Systems, Henry Patent Law Firm, Perimeter Institute, Quantum Valley Ideas Lab, and Vanedge Capital. The judging panel comprised experts that were drawn from the Q4Health sponsor organizations, and we thank our sponsors for their contributions here as well.
Congratulations to all the Q4Health team participants for their creative ideas and thoughtful pitches. The next Q4Health milestone is the final design submission and awards in February 2023.
