A group consisting of members of the UK Science & Technology Network (STN), and the British American Parliamentary Group (BAPG) visited Wright Lab while they were in New Haven on March 24. The group also visited the Hixon Center for Urban Sustainability and the Yale Center for British Art.
At Wright Lab, the group learned about the Wright Lab research program and Yale’s initiatives in quantum science, and engaged in a discussion about Yale’s activities in Quantum CT, a public-private partnership accelerating the adoption of quantum technologies in Connecticut and beyond.
Yale FAS Dean of Science Larry Gladney provided introductory remarks on science at Yale, followed by a brief overview presentation on Wright Lab’s quantum research by Karsten Heeger, Wright Lab Director and Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics. Steven Girvin, Sterling Professor of Physics and professor of applied physics then discussed Yale’s quantum initiative, and Florian Carle, managing director of the Yale Quantum Institute described Yale’s role in Quantum CT. Additional Yale faculty who joined the Wright Lab discussion included Helen Caines, Horace D. Taft Professor of Physics, and Simon Mochrie, professor of physics and of applied physics.
As part of the Wright Lab tour, the group visited one of the cleanrooms and learned from postdoctoral associate Elise Le Boulicaut Ennis about Yale’s involvement in the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN—both in a variety of instrumentation efforts for ATLAS’ upgrade by Keith Baker, D. Allan Bromley Professor of Physics; Sarah Demers, professor and chair of physics; and Paul Tipton, Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics; and in data analysis, including the Demers group’s use of Machine Learning (ML).
The group also had an opportunity to visit ALPHA, one of the quantum-enabled axion dark matter search experiments at Wright Lab. Postdoctoral Mossman Fellow Max Silva-Feaver provided an overview of the ALPHA collaboration’s effort to build ALPHA at Yale. The international collaboration involves a number of Yale researchers, including the groups of Baker; Sean Barrett, professor of physics; Charles Brown, assistant professor of physics; Heeger; Steve Lamoreaux, Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics; Konrad Lehnert, Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics; and Reina Maruyama, professor of physics. Maruyama is the spokesperson of ALPHA.
The members of STN and BAPG who toured Wright Lab were: David Clay, Consul General; Alec Scicchitano, Head of Politics, Press and Public Affairs; Victoria Mier, Politics, Press and Public Affairs Officer; Mary Shin, Senior Science & Technology Officer, UK STN; Nathan Loukil, USCAD Desk Officer; Luke Akehurst, MP (Labour); Amanda Martin, MP (Labour); Oliver Ryan, MP (Labour); Andrew Bowie, MP (Conservative); Dame Caroline Dinenage, DBE, MP (Conservative); and Christine Jardine, MP (Liberal Democrat).
The visit was also featured in a New Haven Independent article and an Instagram post.
Photos from the visit (Flickr)
This story is a duplicate of the story which appeared in the Wright Lab news story of March 27, 2026, by Victoria Misenti. Please see below for a link to the original article.