Fostering creative thinking, interdisciplinary innovation, and outstanding education were the main topics of the inaugural Quantum Ideas Factory – the quantum science workshop/hackathon for free thinking and exploration. During the three-day event, 27 students and young researchers from 13 different countries and 16 nationalities addressed globally relevant questions from state-of-the-art quantum science. What is a photon and how to generate one? How can quantum magnetism and spin chains be used for entanglement transport? Is room-temperature Bose-Einstein condensation possible in carbon nanotube materials, and what would be hypothetical applications of room-temperature superconductors? The young physicists transformed these and other questions into tangible research proposals and business models for transformative applications and basic quantum science.

On behalf of the whole organization and mentoring team we would like to thank everyone who participated! We were blown away by your dedication and the quality of the final results, whether those were  new software tools for quantum machine learning and many-body entanglement analysis, significantly extended Wikipedia pages, or novel concepts for simulation of condensed and solid state systems. Our best wishes and congratulations not only to the three winning teams, but to everyone!