Quantum Technician Skills and Competencies Survey Completed
The EdQuantum team has completed the Quantum Technician Skills and Competencies Survey. Over the six month period in the late 2021 and early 2022, we interviewed and collected input from quantum industry, academia, and other stakeholders about the quantum technician skills and competencies. These are the skills and competencies that the future quantum technician should possess in order to support the emerging quantum 2.0 industry. Our industrial partners have provided a valuable experience-based feedback. With our pedagogical touch, a list of skills was compiled and organized into five (5) sections: (1) PREREQUISITE KNOWLEDGE OF OPTICS AND PHOTONICS, (2) FUNDAMENTALS OF QUANTUM MECHANICS, (3) QUANTUM HARDWARE, (4) QUANTUM INFORMATION THEORY, and (5) FUNDAMENTALS OF SPECTROSCOPY. Based on the results of the survey, a three-course curriculum will be developed and used at two-year academic institutions across the country to educate the future US quantum technician workforce. The results of the survey were summarized in an article titled “Quantum Technician Skills and Competencies for the Emerging Quantum 2.0 Industry” published in the SPIE Journal of Optical Engineering. The link to the article can be found here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.61.8.081803 . We thank all the survey participants as well as our external partners who supported this important initiative.
Let’s Talk Quantum: Introducing Quantum Technology to 2-Year IHEs
We live in an age of the 2nd Quantum Revolution with emerging technologies making a big impact to the existing industries of sensing, communication, and computing. The National Quantum Initiative Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 2018 has highlighted the need to prepare the new quantum workforce to support the advance of new technologies from the laboratory into the commercial realm. This new quantum workforce is to be developed out of photonics field that is viewed as enabling technology for quantum.
In this virtual roundtable, we invited a few experts from both the industry and academia to talk about the need to introduce the quantum education at the two-year institutions of higher education as well as importance of this education in the development of the future quantum technical workforce. We will discuss the best strategies to reach out to the quantum industry, identify needed skills and competencies, and how to teach these new skills at two-year institutions of higher education.
This virtual roundtable is being presented during ATE Principal Investigators Conference titled “Broadening Impact Through Innovation” to be held on October 18-22, 2021.