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As quantum technologies transition from the research laboratory into commercial development, the opportunities for students to begin their careers in this new quantum industry are increasing. With these new career pathways, more and more people are considering the best ways to educate students about quantum concepts and relevant skills. In particular, the quantum industry is looking for new employees with experimental skills, but the instructional labs, capstone projects, research experiences, and internships that provide experiences where students can learn these skills are often resource intensive and not available at all institutions. The quantum company, Infleqtion, recently made its online quantum matter machine, Oqtant, publicly available, so people around the world could send commands to create and manipulate Bose-Einstein condensates and receive back real experimental data. Making a complex quantum experiment accessible to anyone has the potential to extend the opportunity to work with quantum experiments to students at less-resourced institutions. As a first step in understanding the potential benefits of using such a platform in educational settings, we collected data from instructors and students who were interested in using, or had used, Oqtant. In this study, we investigate instructors’ views about reasons they would like to use Oqtant and the challenges they would face in doing so. We also provide a concrete example of how Oqtant was used in an upper-division undergraduate quantum mechanics course and the instructor’s perception of its benefits. We complement this with the student perspective, discussing student experiences interacting with Oqtant in their course or through think-aloud interviews outside of a course. This allows us to investigate the reasons students perceive Oqtant to be a real experiment even though they never physically interact with it, how Oqtant compares to their other experimental experiences, and what they enjoy about working with it. These results will help the community consider the potential value of creating more opportunities for students to access remote quantum experiments. Published by the American Physical Society2025
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This content will become publicly available on March 1, 2026
Education for expanding the quantum workforce: Students’ perceptions of the quantum industry in an upper-division physics capstone course
As quantum technologies transition out of the research lab and into commercial applications, it becomes important to better prepare students to enter this new and evolving workforce. To work toward this goal of preparing physics students for a career in the quantum industry, a senior capstone course called “Quantum Forge” was created at the University of Colorado Boulder. This course aims to provide students with a hands-on quantum experience and prepare them to enter the quantum workforce directly after their undergraduate studies. Some of the course’s goals are to have students understand what comprises the quantum industry and have them feel confident they could enter the industry if desired. To understand to what extent these goals are achieved, we followed the first cohort of Quantum Forge students through their year in the course in order to understand their perceptions of the quantum industry, including what it is, whether they feel that they could be successful in it, and whether or not they want to participate in it. The results of this work can assist educators in optimizing the design of future quantum-industry-focused courses and programs to better prepare students to be a part of this burgeoning industry. Published by the American Physical Society2025
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- Award ID(s):
- 2016244
- PAR ID:
- 10589689
- Publisher / Repository:
- Physical Review
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Physical Review Physics Education Research
- Volume:
- 21
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2469-9896
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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