Dr. Kate Timmerman visited Monmouth College on Friday, September 18th, to share her story during science seminar. Timmerman is currently the CEO of the Chicago Quantum Exchange (CQE); however, her first love was Neuroscience.
In high school, a friend’s mom ran an early intervention autism program at UCLA and invited her to attend a family day; “[I] was very much struck by how autistic people, children, and adults behaved and clearly the way they were interacting with their world was so very different….” As she went on to look for colleges, she shared her curiosity, and colleges suggested psychology; however, that wasn’t where her interest lay: “I don’t want to understand how to help them. I just want to understand, literally, what is going on in their neurons that is different from me…, and realize honestly, how little we know about the human brain in general. So, that was when I kind of got the Neuroscience bug.”
Timmerman explained quantum as “essentially physics at its smallest scales. You’re essentially not only understanding quantum mechanics and kind of the nature of the universe, but over the past few decades, scientists and Engineers have actually started to develop the tools to harness that physics for actual useful applications.” Quantum has been developed for use as sensors that are like GPSs but less hackable and don’t rely on satellites, as well as quantum computers.
“People didn’t really think about quantum technologies outside of a core group of scientists and engineers… now we’re at this place where we are seeing whole countries, whole states making these huge investments in quantum innovation, science and engineering. The state of Illinois has invested like 700 million in it,” said Timmerman.
