Quantum Technology, Quantum Networking

Heriot-Watt’s quantum tech exhibits met more than 2,000 visitors.

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October 15, 2026 by Ivy Delaney

More than 2,000 visitors engaged with exhibits from all five UK Quantum Technology Hubs at New Scientist Live, demonstrating strong public interest in the complex field. Led by Heriot-Watt University and its Integrated Quantum Networks Hub, the collaborative display brought together quantum research from across the UK, demonstrating technologies ranging from computing to healthcare.

Visitors, including children, described the exhibits as “creative, inspirational and extraordinary,” indicating successful communication of these concepts to a young audience. Gerald Buller, Director of the IQN Hub, commented that exciting future generations about the opportunities available in the rapidly emerging quantum technology sector is essential.

Quantum City Showcase Engages 2,000 Visitors at New Scientist Live

Researchers from five UK Quantum Technology Hubs demonstrated the practical applications of quantum technology to over 2,000 visitors at the New Scientist Live event in London. The collaborative exhibit, coordinated by Heriot-Watt University’s Integrated Quantum Networks Hub through its Quantum City initiative, featured hands-on displays of quantum communications, computing advancements and potential healthcare applications. Visitors explored quantum-enhanced imaging systems and gravity sensing technologies, gaining insight into how these technologies are transitioning from research labs into real-world solutions.

The event, recognized as the UK’s largest science festival, provided a platform for scientists and innovators to engage with a broad audience. The participating institutions included Heriot-Watt University, Imperial College London, the National Physical Laboratory, University College London and several other leading universities across the UK. These teams actively engaged with attendees, explaining complex concepts in an accessible manner and sparking interest in the emerging field.

We need to excite future generations about the fascinating opportunities available in the rapidly emerging quantum technology sector.

Gerald Buller, Director of the IQN Hub
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Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney has been working with neural networks and machine learning since the mid-nineties, back when a couple of hidden layers and a long afternoon of training counted as ambitious. She has watched the field go from academic curiosity to the thing quietly running underneath everything, and she brings that long view to quantum computing. For Quantum Zeitgeist she covers the ground where the two fields meet. That means quantum machine learning and the variational algorithms it leans on, and it also means the less glamorous but more interesting story of classical machine learning already doing real work inside quantum machines, decoding error-correcting codes, calibrating noisy hardware and learning the error models that simulators depend on. She writes about the hardware those algorithms have to run on too, and about the post-quantum cryptography scramble that the same hardware has set off. Her stories typically start with the paper, whether that is peer-reviewed work, conference proceedings or an arXiv preprint, with the source linked so you can hold a claim up against the research it came from. She is unimpressed by benchmarks that will not say what they beat, and by demonstrations that only work in the press release.

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