Fostering quantum education with Emily Edwards

Welcome to the New Quantum Era, the podcast dedicated to having conversations with the people working at the forefront of quantum information science and technology. I'm sorry for the delay since the last episode. This conversation was also recorded at APS in April, but I ran out of time to record the introduction before I had to take a little trip. Last week, I was on the island of Helgoland at a conference organized by the Max Planck Institute and Yale University celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Heisenberg's work on the uncertainty principle on that little island in the North Sea. I was there with a small crew of extremely hardworking and talented people shooting a documentary.

Thank you for having me.

My pleasure. So, I've known you for a number of years now. I knew I met you first as one of the cofounders of the Q12 initiative, which is an NSF funded effort to sort of gather, curate, and help people leverage resources for teaching quantum information, quantum science starting in sort of middle school and up through high school and, junior high first year, you know, undergraduate sort of level. Is that is that accurate?

Yes.

Yes. So I I've been consistently impressed with your ability to to organize people, to bring people together, to get people to work on stuff. I I think that in part, you're you're really good at sort of creating the motivation to try to help with the get over the challenges around science communication in general, but but, you know, quantum has some sort of unique challenges for communication and education. And, I mean, how do you think about those those challenges?

No, it's a really good question. So I'll start with the challenge of just communicating about the field. So, you know, I think for a lot of people in the public, including students, including K tail of teachers, they're a big part of that. I think that quantum is something they may have encountered in their, in pop culture, in movies Sure. And or in just

Ant Man.

Ant Man, exactly. It's as if there's another realm of magic. We're here near Disney, mystery, and that nobody can access. And I think that because it it's it's not a part of science that we grab on directly Right. Even though we see its effects all around us every single day Right.

One and I mean, there's any number of classical sort of experiments you can imagine or even remember from your own, middle school or high school kind of classes that that are easily graspable. Right? There's it's it's tangible, it's blocks or it's things on wheels or whatever. There's physical forces and interactions you can directly see. And as you said, everything quantum is only indirectly sort of experience.

No. Absolutely. It's another great question. So I will separate it into both the sort of informal learning where you're kind of going out on your own. You might go to an outreach event or science museum or something or maybe even just look on a website and watch a YouTube video versus formal.

Go for it. That makes total sense. But I'm I mean, I think in part, probably there's more, more people in the audience who have informal opportunities to try to teach others about quantum information rather than than teachers. So I I'd love to hear about sort of the informal.

Right. So informal, I think there's a whole suite of opportunities for people to be content creators, if you will. And then also science ambassadors and quantum science ambassadors specifically. So one of the easy ways we can think about it is just show people the technology that we use Right. To to make this invisible world visible.

Right.

And and we have images of all of

this. Right.

And we have videos of all of it. And so you can start to sort of ignite people's imagination, I would say, similarly to the way we do it when we look into space.

Mhmm. Yeah.

Right? Because now you can start to see it and you're like, oh, that happens in a lab down the street from a house or

an ion in a trap is not that different from a twinkle of a star.

They look like stars to me, Sebastian. They truly do.

You mentioned content creators a couple times. You've actually you've actually, sort of created opportunities to try to help people with with science communication in that kind of social media kind of content creation kind of context. Right?

Like, have I made videos and

Yeah. Well also helped. Right. Yeah. But also helped others on their own sort of process for how to do that sort of thing.

Yeah. So I I am starting to teach science communication workshops

I I mean, I I mentioned that just because I think it's a really valuable effort because when I do see science communication, you know, on, you know, on YouTube videos and stuff, it's very hit or miss. There's a lot of stuff which is, like, just inaccurate right out of the gate. And it doesn't seem I don't think it's necessarily, intentional. I think it's it's because they haven't found those right sources of information and right approach and potentially right partner like you're saying.

Yeah. And I mean, you're you make podcasts. You know, it's a it's a practice. It's a it's a thing you have to work at.

No. Mine are perfect all the time.

Yeah. Of course they are. You're the standard. But but it is a practice and something I mean, in I would say in my heart of hearts, I I definitely consider myself somebody who's making stuff. So even though I I'm happy to lead these consortia and try to advance quantum education at the different levels, it does bring me a great deal of joy to make this stuff Right. And then teach students as I began to do in the last year or so how to do this.

Yeah. I was gonna ask, did you did you have sort of educational training before you got into physics? Or is this something you've sort of been attracted to over over the years as your your careers progress?

Yeah. No. I've learned on the job. Yeah. Okay. So I've I've just been very fortunate on the timing of things that I'm in the position I'm at, I would say. It's a bit of luck. But I went to grad school to be a professor at a liberal arts college. I was motivated to do that because I had professors who were professors at liberal arts college, and they seemed like they were having a really great time. That seemed like a good job to me.

and

I embarked on exploration there. I will say while I didn't have formal training, I did have a mentor who was a professional writer who and a former editor in news in the news business. And so he really guided me and and so gave me that sort of on the job learning that I needed. And he told me then that you can't just be a good writer. You need to sort of be a Jack or Jill of all Right. Media trade. And so I that's why I've dabbled in a lot of it.

You've done some visual visualizations of of stuff as

well. Yeah. Yes. And then I think the part that I work in k 12 education and what I've become really passionate about has been an opportunity that I've been able to work in science policy a little bit on the, you know, to try to figure out how we can, under the National Quantum Initiative Act, how we can be better at bringing this to young learners and teachers and really supporting teachers to do what works for their classrooms.

And what do you say I mean, I think when I brought up this topic with other people who are maybe less informed, I almost always get the reaction of, like, really that young? Like, middle school? Is that you know, why do you think it's so important to to to sort of intercept the educational pathway that early with with these concepts or, you know, invisible world and super non intuitive and Mhmm. Difficult to grasp?

Yeah. So it's I'll say a couple of things. So first, non intuitive is in the eye of the bolder, I would say. I think things are non intuitive for us. You know, in in The US, we wait to talk about quantum mechanics until you're a physics major in your junior or senior year where you're maybe you've already been, like, sort of, entrenched in classical mechanics for a pretty long time at that point.

Your intuition is highly classical.

Your intuition is highly classical, and your education has been highly classical.

So it do you think it's fair to say then that there's sort of there's early sort of demos that are engaging as a first introduction, and there's I think there's it's fair to say there's pretty good introductory material that's sort of advanced high school or junior college or first year undergraduate sort of level. It's really that in between that that there's sort of the the the least available content. Like, do we sort of abandon them after we, you know, generate that initial burst of interest?

Yeah. I mean, this is this is the problem. And in fact, even though there may be some content at high school and early stage, four year institutions, it's not widely adopted. Mhmm. So most students in The US do not see quantum information science at all Right. Period, in any of their education.

Serendipitous, actually. Well, I guess, initially, computers was my entry point and that was it definitely was role models. I mean, there was there was I was interested in what was going on in the, you know, the early days of personal computing, early days of the Internet, and that sort of brought me into the industry. Quantum, I just serendipitously fell into, an IBM's Think Summit at TJ Watson and had my mind blown. But, I mean, it you're right.

Yeah. And and students who say in middle school that they wanna be in a science career are, like, three times as likely to end up in a science career Right. Than otherwise not. Now, what did I wanna do? I wanted to be a teacher. So is it so surprising where I've landed? No. Oh. It's not. Think students know themselves better than we give them credit for. Now, we need we need to be ready for them. They're ready for quantum.

Right.

We need to be ready, and we need to be ready to provide role models for them so that they have a stepping stone there and they now while we're waiting for curricula to catch up.

And do you think I mean, sometimes I think there's a an interesting sort of character to this moment we're in where it's we're now sort of was sort of foundational quantum mechanics, quantum physics, quantum science, and technology. Right? We're sort of transitioning into these more and more applied, ways. You know, having a tech savvy workforce has been a pretty familiar topic to industry for some Mhmm. Time.

Yeah. I mean, I believe that.

Right.

And users who who haven't necessarily needed to be science savvy to use the things, buy the things, go buy the latest, greatest.

Right.

But I think we are at an inflection point where people should be having this discussion because I do think there's a real risk in the current climate that we continue to think it's gonna be this user economy. Right. Right. And instead, I think, you know, in the absence of more readiness

Right.

And literacy and science, I think we're gonna see a collapse of some of some of the progress that we've made.

Well, I mean, it just occurs to me that if we get, you know, if we deliver on the promise of of, you know, quantum computing at scale with a certain amount of fault tolerance and you're starting to do effective simulation of natural systems, the industries that rely on, you know, chemical processes or materials, novel materials for their end products for those end users are going to need a work a workforce that understand the possibility of being able to experiment with, you know, designer materials for your car or your plane or whatever the the end product is. Right? And it feels like if you don't have that that imagination that comes with with the science literacy, then you are risking your competitor having that workforce. So Yeah. You mentioned public sector or government spending.

I mean, I do. The q twelve is a public private partnership. It's funded mostly by the National Science Foundation and the Army Research Office through one of the national centers at the Laboratory for Physical Sciences. And it's been, you know, I think we've had a lot of impact because there was nothing before, right? But at some point we are going to hit a wall and I think it's coming.

Right.

And I think if you don't have this blend of federal and private support, then whether, you know, philanthropic and private sector companies, then I think I think, yeah, it's just gonna stall out. It's just gonna be another hot topic area that people had dreams about.

Right.

I mean, computer science education has been working for over two decades to get into school. They've made tons of product progress, and they're backed by substantial private money

Right.

As well as federal money. There's a lot of NSF money in computer science education to make it equitable, but also to make it robust and to really just understand how we're using these tools. You know, it's not just about, you know, I think we hear a lot about equity, but really it is about the whole picture of what that means and how to make things so that all students have access to broadband, that students can figure out how to use emerging tools like AI as part of the conversation now. I think if we're if we're not doing at least as much as computer science, I think we've really missed out. Right.

A direct market. That's

right. There's not a direct market. It's largely r and d. And it's awesome, but it's largely r and d.

And r and d is is a it's a niche as far as a need from a workforce. You don't need a gigantic workforce for r and d. You need a bunch of very deep specialist people.

But That's right.

Right. So that that makes total sense. So okay. So then if somebody wants to either get involved by in those the sort of informal settings and or they're a company and they wanted to get involved in some way to support, what what is the next step they take?

The next step should be to reach out. Reach out directly. I'm happy to chat, or a member of the larger q twelve partnership. What I've been trying to do recently is connect people to their local region. So if there's a teacher or a person listening who wants to spend some time developing material or just wants to know more about quantum education in general or how to talk to their local policymakers or school districts, whatever they need, you know, we now have, I would say, enough of a movement in this area that there are people in nearly every state who we connect with.

Right.

And then additionally, I think if there's yeah. I mean, I'm not gonna say no to sponsors for education. Bring it on. We we need we need to have that. And we will be, you know, at a point where if we don't move in that model and have a blend of financial support, then quantum education and workforce development is really just gonna collapse, truly. I don't mean to be so negative. It's just true. So, yeah, reach out.

Come to that, but I think the risk is real. So it Yeah.

I think I think I think reach out so that we can think differently. And I'll I'll finally say this, that computer science has done a lot of progress, but they had to do a lot of course correction because they waited too long. Both to have that big private investment, to have that big public investment, they waited too

long. Interesting.

And in fact, they've been trying to claw back gains they already had, say, in women. Mhmm. And if you're not having women working in your STEM field, then you're leaving people on the table. You're leaving talent behind.

That's right.

So they have a lot of talent that they're trying to claw back because they waited too long.

Right. Thank you very much, Emily, for joining me. And thank you for all of your efforts for Q12 . I think it's really, really important. So

Well, thank you, Sebastian. You are wonderful, and I appreciate your efforts and your partnership. Thank you.

Thank you for listening to another episode of the podcast, a production of the New Quantum Era, hosted by me, Sebastian Hassinger, with theme music by OCH. You can find past episodes on www.newquantumera.com or on bluesky @newquantumera.com. Thanks again to the support from APS for this episode, and thanks to Emily Edwards for a really enjoyable conversation. If you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and tell your quantum curious friends to give it a listen.