New year, new opportunities
We hope you had a great summer time and that you are (still) in good health. The academic year has officially started this week and within the Quantum.Amsterdam hub students are back at the Science Park, researchers are back at work as well, and conferences & activities concerning business are soon to be up and running again. We are excited for this new year of working on the future of quantum.
There are lots of things to look forward to. How does this sound: workshops on location, in-person business advice, live events with networking opportunities afterwards? Good, right? And with our first Q.A newsletter we would like to give you a bit more information on what is going on in our hub.
Quantum.Amsterdam & Quantum Delta NL raised the flag together
Right before the summer holidays Quantum.Amsterdam and Quantum Delta NL raised the flag together to celebrate our close collaboration for the coming seven years. “I will ensure that based on our local strengths here in Amsterdam, we contribute to these national quantum goals. I look forward to a good collaboration with Quantum Delta NL in the coming 7 years, and hopefully also in the time after that”, says Christian Schaffner, Chair of Quantum.Amsterdam.
“The collaboration with Amsterdam started as early as 2014, when Harry Buhrman (director QuSoft) explained their work on algorithms for the first time”, added Freeke Heijman, director Quantum Delta NL. “In the years that followed, a lot of progress was made and hurdles were taken, leading to the National Agenda Quantum Technology and our solid QDNL team. The time was needed to get to this point, in which all hubs have their unique place but also form one Quantum Delta NL ecosystem, in which we work together. This made raising the flag together extra special”.
With this collaboration, quantum technology from the academic world is becoming more tangible, understandable and more useful for society, both for the business community and for the general public.
Prepare yourself and your company for the new era of quantum technology
One of our goals is to prepare companies for the quantum age by raising the knowledge and awareness about this fascinating technology and by helping to identify and validate high-impact use cases. That is why we organise workshops to prepare a broad audience for the opportunities & threats that quantum technology brings to businesses and organisations.
The impact of quantum computers can be immense. Although usable full-scale quantum computers are years away, it makes sense to start preparing now for this era. It will take several years to create a sufficient workforce with the right knowledge to deal with this new technology. Hence, if you want to be on time and prepare yourself for the future of quantum, you can register for our workshop General Awareness Quantum Computing.
Ready for more knowledge and good conversations on quantum?
In addition to our workshop, we also host free available Public Meetups once every two months. During the meetups, we interview pioneers from the field of Quantum Technology live on stream, and allow the audience to ask questions and interact. The sessions are aimed at a broad audience: no deep prior knowledge of quantum expected!
Besides Public Meetups we also organise Business Meetups that are aimed at companies and organizations in a specific field with an interest in quantum. These are round-table networking sessions where we address the latest issues and developments in quantum technology with input from our participants and external guest speakers. If you are part of a company or (governmental) organization that has a serious interest in following quantum developments, and would like to stay well-connected, please contact Koen Groenland for more information.
Meet our new business developer: Maarten Wijdekop
Hello colleagues from the Amsterdam community,
I have joined Quantum.Amsterdam this summer as the new Business Developer, and happy to introduce myself to you.
I grew up in De Rijp, a village 40 km north of Amsterdam, an old but pretty fisherman’s village that is now sandwiched between two polders (former lakes that were pumped dry), the Schermer and the Beemster.
In 1994, I went to study Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the UvA, at the Roeterseiland location, and when I graduated I found a job as a researcher for Corus (now Tata Steel), a steel company in IJmuiden. Pretty soon after that, I had an opportunity to start a PhD in Materials Engineering in Swansea, a nice seaside city in Wales (UK). This was an applied research project on coating technology, which kept me busy for the next four years. After that, I stuck around in the UK and worked for Tata Steel again, in Product Development and R&D, and in 2013 I switched jobs to a chemical company, to work as a business development manager. During this time I lived in Chester, a small city with Roman and Medieval heritage, in the northwest of England, until my wife Heather and I decided to move back to the Netherlands in 2017. We have since settled in Alkmaar, and I joined TNO for the next four years as the business developer in the Photovoltaics group, before I started at Q.A in June this year.
I’m looking forward to work with you, and to hear about your ideas on valorisation and network building for the things that you work on, so that I can help you together with Koen, Yvonne and Victor.
You can reach me on:
E maarten.wijdekop@quantum.amsterdam M +31 618592759
– Maarten Wijdekop
Delegation at Quantum Computing Summit
We are working hard to increase our network and look out for collaborations. So, we are happy to announce that we are part of the delegation that will attend The Quantum Computing Summit this year. On behalf of Quantum.Amsterdam Koen Groenland, Dimitri van Esch, Hans Roeland Poolman, Ido Niessen & Chris Cade are present. The event is designed to provide business, and technical insight, qualified via application-based quantumexperiences to showcase how quantum is delivering real business value.
If you want to learn more about the possibilities to collaborate with our hub you can meet up with us this September in London. We’ll be heading to the summit together with QuSoft, Quantum Delta NL, QBlox and the Netherlands Innovation Network UK.
Thank you for reading our first newsletter. We hope to see you soon at one of our events!
