Cohorts 6 & 8 recently went to California for a week of industry visits. We flew to San Francisco on Saturday 2nd April and were joined by 2 cohorts from UCL’s Quantum CDT. We stayed in Berkeley which was a nice student neighbourhood with lots of cafes, bars and restaurants. We spent the Sunday sightseeing in San Francisco and recovering from jet lag.
On Monday we visited University of California Berkeley for a tour of their labs and presentations on their research work. On Tuesday we visited PsiQuantum at Playground global, a venture capital company in Palo Alto, where we had an amazing lunch and lots of interesting talks. Later that afternoon we walked to PsiQuantum lab for a tour which was then followed by networking drinks with PsiQuantum staff. This was most people’s favourite visit of the week.
On Wednesday we had a tour of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, followed by talks with people from NASA and Rigetti. That afternoon we flew down to Santa Barbara. Our hotel there had a pool and a hot tub, and we all enjoyed a margarita at the local Mexican restaurant! On Thursday we visited Google Quantum AI’s lab and had really interesting presentations by members of their team (and were given some nice freebies!). On Thursday evening we got a coach to Pasadena, Los Angles. Then on Friday we went to visit Amazon at Caltech and had a full day of talks and workshops. Everyone’s highlight was the ‘fireside’ chat with John Preskill.
It was great to finally get to go to the States and despite the additional covid measures, everyone really enjoyed it. Looking forward to next year already!
Photo: Visiting PsiQuantum
