The evening of Thursday 4 August 2022 saw the fifth in the Ideas@theHouse series—a joint presentation of Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC QC, Governor New South Wales, and the Royal Society of NSW—take place in the Ballroom of Government House Sydney.  

On that occasion, Scientia Professor Michelle Simmons AO FRS DistFRSN FAA FTSE of UNSW Sydney and Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computing and Communication Technology delivered an address titled ‘Manufacturing at the atomic scale’ to a face-to-face audience of 83 and an online audience of over 40. Her talk traced the fascinating journey towards the building of a quantum computer by the manipulation of atoms and revealed the globally unique technology developed by her and her team to build electronic devices with atomic precision. In the presentation, which is now available on the Society’s YouTube channel, Professor Simmons, who is a global leader in the field of quantum computing, spoke of how to design and manufacture atomic-scale components into the circuitry of a quantum computer and their demonstration of the world’s first atomically manufactured integrated circuit — a key step along the pathway towards a commercially useful quantum processor.

Some images from that occasion are available at this link for viewing and downloading.