A late March 2026 SFU (Simon Fraser University) Café Scientifique notice announces two upcoming Vancouver area (Note: Burnaby is part of Metro Vancouver) talks related to Nobel prize winning research.(received via email and accessible here for a time), Note: Both events are free,
Ever wonder what people win Nobel Prizes for? We know this research is important, but what does it mean? Join SFU Science faculty members who are experts in the areas of research for each Nobel Prize in science as they break down what the award-winning research is about, and why it’s a big deal. After each speaker you will have an opportunity to ask questions and get answers from researchers who are doing similar work in their own labs on campus.
[from nobelprize.org,
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025 was awarded jointly to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi “for the development of metal–organic frameworks
Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 was awarded jointly to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025 was awarded jointly to Mary E. Brunkow, Frederick J. Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi “for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance]
Extreme Light: Unlocking the Power of Superfast Lasers
March 27, 2026 6:30 – 9:00 pm SFU Harbour Centre Challenge Theatre [downtown Vancouver]
SFU and UBC Science Outreach invite you to an evening with Nobel Prize-winning physicist Donna Strickland at SFU Harbour Centre. This public event will include a presentation followed by a Q&A session.
With the invention of lasers, the intensity of a light wave was increased by orders of magnitude over what had been achieved with a light bulb or sunlight. This much higher intensity led to new phenomena being observed, such as violet light coming out when red light went into the material. This new understanding of laser-matter interactions, led to the development of new machining techniques that are used in laser eye surgery or micromachining of glass used in cell phones.
Daniel Leznoff, Department of Chemistry, for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Mani Larijani, Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, for the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology
Steve Dodge, Department or Physics, for the Nobel Prize in Physics
There’s more about the March 27, 2026 Extreme Light: Unlocking the Power of Superfast Lasers, from the event registration page,
Join us for a special public talk featuring Donna Strickland, Nobel Laureate in Physics.
Location Challenge Theatre, SFU Harbour Centre 515 West Hastings St., Vancouver
Date Friday, March 27
Schedule 6:30 PM – Doors open 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM – Presentation and Q&A
Overview SFU and UBC Science Outreach invites you to an evening with Nobel Prize-winning physicist Donna Strickland at SFU Harbour Centre. This public event will include a presentation followed by a Q&A session.
Venue SFU Harbour Centre 515 West Hastings St., Vancouver
Event inquiries sfuscienceoutreach@sfu.ca
Communications Officer position for UK’s Sense about Science
A March 24, 2026 email from Sense about Science discussed this opportunity,
We’re looking for someone who shares our passion for promoting the public interest in sound science and evidence to join our friendly London-based team.
Our new Communications Officer will be tech-savvy with a curiosity for digital performance and a creative flair for engaging audiences online. They’ll thrive working with our Head of Communications as part of a small, outcome-focused team, bringing strong organisational skills and flexibility to the role.
Here are more details about the position, from their Vacancies page (click on Communications Officer),
About us
Sense about Science is a unique campaigning charity that has turned the case for sound science and evidence into a popular cause. It has launched important initiatives to expand and protect open discussions of evidence, including Transparency of Evidence, to secure openness for the public about the evidence behind policy; the Maddox prize; AllTrials, a global campaign for the reporting of clinical trial results; and ‘Ask for Evidence’, to help people ask good questions on subjects such as risk and AI. We run Evidence Week in Parliament in the UK and have challenged practices and changed the behaviour of governments, media and corporations in the use of scientific evidence internationally.
What you’ll do
Reporting to the Head of Communications, you’ll be responsible for:
Maintaining our social presence, developing content and informing strategies that will build our profile and better communicate our mission and activities
Developing and publishing informative and engaging content for the Sense about Science
Writing clear, concise and eye-catching supporter communications and publicity messaging
Monitoring our inbox and responding to inquiries promptly and appropriately.
Producing a wide range of high-quality audiovisual content on request, including but not limited to video, audio and text, sometimes at short notice
About you
You are enthusiastic about Sense about Science’s popular vision for evidence and transparency in public life and want to make a difference.
You’re tech savvy with a curiosity about digital performance and a creative flair for engaging audiences online. You enjoy working as part of a small team that is outcome focused and are well organised and flexible.
What we offer
You’ll be part of a dynamic team that supports each other and celebrates success. We’ll help you grow as a communicator and public interest advocate, with hands-on responsibility from day one. We provide opportunities to learn from colleagues, professional training and on the job development of technical skills.
Our offices are close to Regents Park and Oxford Circus in a shared building with cycle, shower, and kitchen facilities and friendly staff.
Salary: £30k, with opportunity for rapid progression
Location: office based in Central London (W1); some travel and out of hours activity required.
What we’re looking for
Experience
Essential
Working with web CMS systems, ideally WordPress.
Creating and publishing professional comms on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky.
Writing engaging content in long and short form
Degree, preferably in a scientific discipline – or evidence of equivalent.
Desirable
Knowledge of and engagement with web and social analytics
Creating and delivering communications plans for always-on activities and special events.
Working within and implementing brand guidelines.
Masters in Science Communication.
Skills and attributes
Essential
A passion for Sense about Science’s mission, and an appetite for science news, public debate and current affairs.
Experience with standard office software including Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
Experience of using professional software to create, edit and schedule audiovisual social content.
Demonstrable understanding of analytics and optimisation for digital media.
Organised, with the ability to plan ahead and prioritise workload when needed.
Desirable
Either academic experience of scientific research or a broader understanding of the demands of research and communication.
If your CV doesn’t match all these requirements but you’re passionate about evidence in policy and transparency, and absolutely convinced you are right for us, then please make an application explaining why. There is great scope in this job to develop, get training and make the role your own. Candidates must have the right to work in the UK.
Application process
To apply please submit a one-page letter and a two-page CV to recruitment@senseaboutscience.org with the subject line: “Communications Officer”.
Application deadline: 9 am Monday 13 April 2026. Shortlisted candidates will be notified by 17th April and interviews held w/b 20th April 2026.
This supremacy, refers to an engineering milestone and a October 23, 2019 news item on ScienceDaily announces the milestone has been reached,
Researchers in UC [University of California] Santa Barbara/Google scientist John Martinis’ group have made good on their claim to quantum supremacy. Using 53 entangled quantum bits (“qubits”), their Sycamore computer has taken on — and solved — a problem considered intractable for classical computers.
“A computation that would take 10,000 years on a classical supercomputer took 200 seconds on our quantum computer,” said Brooks Foxen, a graduate student researcher in the Martinis Group. “It is likely that the classical simulation time, currently estimated at 10,000 years, will be reduced by improved classical hardware and algorithms, but, since we are currently 1.5 trillion times faster, we feel comfortable laying claim to this achievement.”
The feat is outlined in a paper in the journal Nature.
The milestone comes after roughly two decades of quantum computing research conducted by Martinis and his group, from the development of a single superconducting qubit to systems including architectures of 72 and, with Sycamore, 54 qubits (one didn’t perform) that take advantage of the both awe-inspiring and bizarre properties of quantum mechanics.
“The algorithm was chosen to emphasize the strengths of the quantum computer by leveraging the natural dynamics of the device,” said Ben Chiaro, another graduate student researcher in the Martinis Group. That is, the researchers wanted to test the computer’s ability to hold and rapidly manipulate a vast amount of complex, unstructured data.
“We basically wanted to produce an entangled state involving all of our qubits as quickly as we can,” Foxen said, “and so we settled on a sequence of operations that produced a complicated superposition state that, when measured, returns bitstring with a probability determined by the specific sequence of operations used to prepare that particular superposition. The exercise, which was to verify that the circuit’s output correspond to the equence used to prepare the state, sampled the quantum circuit a million times in just a few minutes, exploring all possibilities — before the system could lose its quantum coherence.
‘A complex superposition state’
“We performed a fixed set of operations that entangles 53 qubits into a complex superposition state,” Chiaro explained. “This superposition state encodes the probability distribution. For the quantum computer, preparing this superposition state is accomplished by applying a sequence of tens of control pulses to each qubit in a matter of microseconds. We can prepare and then sample from this distribution by measuring the qubits a million times in 200 seconds.”
“For classical computers, it is much more difficult to compute the outcome of these operations because it requires computing the probability of being in any one of the 2^53 possible states, where the 53 comes from the number of qubits — the exponential scaling is why people are interested in quantum computing to begin with,” Foxen said. “This is done by matrix multiplication, which is expensive for classical computers as the matrices become large.”
According to the new paper, the researchers used a method called cross-entropy benchmarking to compare the quantum circuit’s output (a “bitstring”) to its “corresponding ideal probability computed via simulation on a classical computer” to ascertain that the quantum computer was working correctly.
“We made a lot of design choices in the development of our processor that are really advantageous,” said Chiaro. Among these advantages, he said, are the ability to experimentally tune the parameters of the individual qubits as well as their interactions.
While the experiment was chosen as a proof-of-concept for the computer, the research has resulted in a very real and valuable tool: a certified random number generator. Useful in a variety of fields, random numbers can ensure that encrypted keys can’t be guessed, or that a sample from a larger population is truly representative, leading to optimal solutions for complex problems and more robust machine learning applications. The speed with which the quantum circuit can produce its randomized bit string is so great that there is no time to analyze and “cheat” the system.
“Quantum mechanical states do things that go beyond our day-to-day experience and so have the potential to provide capabilities and application that would otherwise be unattainable,” commented Joe Incandela, UC Santa Barbara’s vice chancellor for research. “The team has demonstrated the ability to reliably create and repeatedly sample complicated quantum states involving 53 entangled elements to carry out an exercise that would take millennia to do with a classical supercomputer. This is a major accomplishment. We are at the threshold of a new era of knowledge acquisition.”
Looking ahead
With an achievement like “quantum supremacy,” it’s tempting to think that the UC Santa Barbara/Google researchers will plant their flag and rest easy. But for Foxen, Chiaro, Martinis and the rest of the UCSB/Google AI Quantum group, this is just the beginning.
“It’s kind of a continuous improvement mindset,” Foxen said. “There are always projects in the works.” In the near term, further improvements to these “noisy” qubits may enable the simulation of interesting phenomena in quantum mechanics, such as thermalization, or the vast amount of possibility in the realms of materials and chemistry.
In the long term, however, the scientists are always looking to improve coherence times, or, at the other end, to detect and fix errors, which would take many additional qubits per qubit being checked. These efforts have been running parallel to the design and build of the quantum computer itself, and ensure the researchers have a lot of work before hitting their next milestone.
“It’s been an honor and a pleasure to be associated with this team,” Chiaro said. “It’s a great collection of strong technical contributors with great leadership and the whole team really synergizes well.”
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Quantum supremacy using a programmable superconducting processor by Frank Arute, Kunal Arya, Ryan Babbush, Dave Bacon, Joseph C. Bardin, Rami Barends, Rupak Biswas, Sergio Boixo, Fernando G. S. L. Brandao, David A. Buell, Brian Burkett, Yu Chen, Zijun Chen, Ben Chiaro, Roberto Collins, William Courtney, Andrew Dunsworth, Edward Farhi, Brooks Foxen, Austin Fowler, Craig Gidney, Marissa Giustina, Rob Graff, Keith Guerin, Steve Habegger, Matthew P. Harrigan, Michael J. Hartmann, Alan Ho, Markus Hoffmann, Trent Huang, Travis S. Humble, Sergei V. Isakov, Evan Jeffrey, Zhang Jiang, Dvir Kafri, Kostyantyn Kechedzhi, Julian Kelly, Paul V. Klimov, Sergey Knysh, Alexander Korotkov, Fedor Kostritsa, David Landhuis, Mike Lindmark, Erik Lucero, Dmitry Lyakh, Salvatore Mandrà, Jarrod R. McClean, Matthew McEwen, Anthony Megrant, Xiao Mi, Kristel Michielsen, Masoud Mohseni, Josh Mutus, Ofer Naaman, Matthew Neeley, Charles Neill, Murphy Yuezhen Niu, Eric Ostby, Andre Petukhov, John C. Platt, Chris Quintana, Eleanor G. Rieffel, Pedram Roushan, Nicholas C. Rubin, Daniel Sank, Kevin J. Satzinger, Vadim Smelyanskiy, Kevin J. Sung, Matthew D. Trevithick, Amit Vainsencher, Benjamin Villalonga, Theodore White, Z. Jamie Yao, Ping Yeh, Adam Zalcman, Hartmut Neven & John M. Martinis. Nature volume 574, pages505–510 (2019) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1666-5 Issue Date 24 October 2019
