From May 1st to May 9th the first International Student Workshop on Quantum Technologies (ISWQT) took place in Shanghai, China. The event was co-organized by students from the Vienna Doctoral Program on Complex Quantum Systems (CoQuS), University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), and Heidelberg University (Germany). It comprised plenty of student talks presenting recent progress at the participating universities, invited talks by professors, and excursions to selected research facilities. On top of the scientific exchange, the experience was broadened by bringing people of different cultural backgrounds together.

Various subfields of quantum physics were covered in parallel talk sessions, with some focus on cold atom experiments engaging in fundamental research in quantum many-body physics as well as in more applied quantum metrology, and photon entanglement and its role in quantum information. ISWQT 2019 was hosted by Prof. Jianwei Pan, who welcomed the international guests in the opening ceremony. The Viennese delegation was officially represented by Prof. Markus Aspelmeyer and Prof. Jörg Schmiedmayer, who both contributed with an invited talk, as did CoQuS alumnus Prof. Xiaosong Ma from Nanjing University. The workshop furthermore included visits to the labs of the Shanghai branch of USTC and East China Normal University and the campuses of Hangzhou Dianzi University and Alibaba Group.

All participants from Vienna are part of the CoQuS program, which consists of research groups from TU Wien, University of Vienna, Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information Vienna (IQOQI), and Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST). Both Quantum Metrology PhD students in CoQuS contributed greatly to ISWQT, with Benedikt Gerstenecker being part of the organizing team and Kjeld Beeks presenting a talk, for which he was awarded the shared best student talk prize. Furthermore, both were awarded the shared first prize for their poster contributions.

The realization of this joint workshop allowed for the exchange of ideas and experience between the students from the different communities and enabled discussions about common challenges and promising perspectives. It has the ability to strengthen the relationship between the scientific partners and promotes the emergence of new collaborations.