The Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (CQIQC) is excited to announce the return of our student-led conference - Research Day 2026!
Research Day 2026 will be hosted for students at the University of Toronto. The conference aims to foster a collaborative community within U of T by providing students with a space to learn from fellow students and to engage with the diverse research within the field of quantum information and quantum control. In addition, CQIQC will invite three speakers within the field — one each from academia, a research institute, and industry — to provide an opportunity for students to hear and ask about pursuing research beyond graduate studies.
Conference Details
Date: Friday, July 31
Time: 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Location: McLennan Physical Laboratories (MP137)
Registration Fee: Free
Lunch and refreshments will be provided.
Students are asked to register for the conference by following https://forms.office.com/r/Txn6Kfbf1N and filling out the form. Participating in the oral presentations or the poster session is highly encouraged (space for oral presentations is limited, but all registrants who indicate interest will be offered at least a poster presentation). Those selected for oral presentations will have 10 minutes to speak, plus time for questions. The final deadline for registration (including presentation titles and abstracts) is July 17.
Invited Speakers
Academia: Stefanos Kourtis (Université de Sherbrooke)
Research Institute: Khabat Heshami (National Research Council)
Industry: Ignacio Loaiza (Xanadu)
If you have any questions, please reach out to one of the student organizers below.
Kiera Pond Grehan (kiera.augusto@mail.utoronto.ca)
Maggie Lawrence (maggie.lawrence@mail.utoronto.ca)
Shashank Mehendale (shashank.mehendale@mail.utoronto.ca)
SCHEDULE
8:30–9:00
Registration + Breakfast (MP125)
9:00–10:20 — Presentations (MP137)
9:00 — Benjamin Driesen — Characterizing a narrow p-wave Feshbach resonance
9:20 — Pria Dobney — Experimental quantum state learning with pairs of photons
9:40 — Samuel Fontaine — Quantum enhanced frequency conversion, which state is best?
10:00 — Zachary Giles — Capturing Open Quantum System Dynamics with Effective Hamiltonians
10:20–10:50
Snack (MP125)
10:50–12:10 — Presentations (MP137)
10:50 — Andy Jiao — What is the cross-phase shift induced by a photon that is prepared continuous-wave and then localized in time via detection?
11:10 — Raymond Langer — Doubly-Resonant Defects in Lab-in-a-Photonic Crystal Biosensors
11:30 — Linjun Wang — Quartet Quasi-Symmetries for Quantum Subspace Expansion
11:50 — Chi Kam Wong — Characterization of Entanglement and its Propagation in Bosonic & Anyonic Systems
12:10–1:00
Lunch (MP125)
1:00–3:15 — Invited Talks (MP137)
1:00–1:45 — Khabat Heshami — Photons for Quantum Information Processing
1:45–2:30 — Ignacio Loaiza — Towards quantum utility: spectroscopy and beyond
2:30–3:15 — Stefanos Kourtis — Building a brain out of levitating atoms
3:15–4:30
Poster Session + Snacks (MP125)
4:30–5:00
Prizes + Closing Remarks (MP137)
POSTERS
Arjun Dixit — Excited States without Growing Per-State Circuit Resources via Quantum Seniority Subspace Expansion
Brett Min — Separation of relaxation timescales via strong system-bath coupling
Eames Donovan — Anomalous charging of bilayer graphene supported on van der Waals dielectric Bi₂SeO₅
Elizabeth Agnes Ormsby — Designing a pressure cell for studying bilayer graphene under pressure
Florian Brandstätter — Precision spectroscopy of rare-earth nuclei to search for T-violating new physics
Joseph Cuzzupoli — A Tunable Geometry Optical Lattice for Studies of Chiral Fermions in Non-Trivial Topological Bands
Kathleen Hart — Pseudo-chiral phonons from octupolar magnetic order
Maggie Wang — Dimer projection contact and clock shift of a UF
Matthew Albert — Moiré models beyond a single valley
Max Bridgewater — Dual Laser-Cavity Frequency Stabilization
Michael Silver — Horizontally Scalable Quantum Circuit Simulation via Adaptive Boundary Truncation
Nicholas Sullivan — Magneto-optical trapping of neutral atoms in a light-induced effective magnetic field
Shashank Mehendale — Efficient Block Encodings of Vibrational Hamiltonians
Vinz Mariano — Spatial correlations in quantum gas microscopy images of ultracold potassium-40