Past Activities

IYQ Conferences

The United Nations has declared 2025 to be the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology to celebrate the 100th year anniversary of the discovery of quantum mechanics. To commemorate this, QuEST has hosted two IYQ (International Year of Quantum Science and Technology) conferences in 2025. For more information on IYQ, visit: https://quantum2025.org/en/ 

  • STEM Teacher Conference held at Stony Brook University (6/28/25)

Summer Camps 

In 2025, we held

  • a 4-day camp @ SBU (6/30/25-7/3/25) attended by 35 high-school students. The camp was featured by news12 Long Island:

In 2024 we held two 5-day camps in June/July and August

  • @NYSCI (8/19-8/23): 60 high-school students
  • @SBU (6/27,6/28,7/1,7/2,7/3)

  • In 2023 the 2nd QuEST Summer Camp was held at New York Hall of Science Museum from August 21st to August 25th, 2023; 9:30am to 2:30pm in the classroom downstairs.We made minor tweaking of the materials and activities. Given that the location is at NYSCI, we took the advantage of the exhibitions there and the museum staff offered guided tours for students. This replaced the lab tour.
  • The first QuEST Summer Camp was held at Stony Brook University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy from June 26th to June 30th, 2023. Location was Physics A119 Lab and camp hours were 9:30am to 2:30pm. (PI Kelly, Co-PI Wei, Co-PI Schneble, six graduate and two undergraduate students, and N=31 students in grades 10-12). Notably, 17 of the 31 camp participants were young women. This camp incorporated the major themes addressed in the teacher professional development workshop. There were additional sessions on academic planning, QIST careers, Q&A panel with QIST graduate students, and laboratory tours.

Teacher Workshops

  • 2024 at SBU (May 14, 21, 28 and June 4)
  • 2023 at NYSCI (Nov and Dec)
  • Spring 2023 at SBU. A four-part professional development series (PI Kelly, Co-PI Wei, Co-PI Schneble, graduate students, and N=19 middle and high school physical science and computer science teachers). Three-hour meetings were held one evening per week for four weeks (May 18 – June 8). This was our first comprehensive workshop on quantum information science and technology (QIST), which also included curriculum planning and topics related to academic and career pathways in QIST fields. The four major themes of the workshop were: (1) Building Blocks of Quantum Physics, (2) Quantum Ideas: From Superposition to Entanglement, (3) Quantum Computing Fundamentals, and (4) QIST Pedagogy and Curriculum Development. We specificially tested the planned set of materials on teachers first before we adapted the materials and held the first two one-week summer camps for students (later in summer 2023).

Quantum Labs

We held a number of  5-hour, one-day events offering lecture instruction and activities, in which high-school STEM teachers brought their whole class to visit Stony Brook or NYSCI.

  • 2025 (May) at NYSCI
  • 2024 (May) at NYSCI
  • 2024 (Feb, March)  at SBU
  • 2023 (Dec) at SBU

Teachers’ Pilot Workshop

  • Februrary 20, 2023. We held a pilot full-day professional development (PI Kelly, Co-PI Wei, Co-PI Schneble, graduate students, and N=6 middle and high school physical science and mathematics teachers), held in person. We tested lectures and activities related to the quantum bits and IBM Quantum Composer. We specifically elicited feedback from mathematics teachers to assess the limits of students’ mathematical knowledge as it may relate to matrix multiplication and linear algebra.
  • November 1, 2022. We held a pilot full-day professional development (PI Kelly, Co-PI Wei, Co-PI Schneble, graduate students, and N=8 middle and high school physical science teachers), held in person. In this workshop, we tested lectures and activities related to diffraction, superposition, and polarization, which are prior knowledge useful to have before venturing in quantum physics and quantum information science.

Focus Group

  • August 29, 2022. We organized a one-hour meeting with a few middle and high school physical science teachers, in which we discussed where quantum concepts fit within college-prep and Advanced Placement Physics and Chemistry coursework. This meeting provided contextual information on how to structure the professional development workshops for teachers. The information also included the typical mathematical preparation of students, curricular sequencing, and student misconceptions.