Episode 25: Celebrating Scientific Discovery with Music, Art and Poetry

During its annual March meeting, APS celebrated the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology with a week-long Quantum Fest. The two directors of the event combined their scientific expertise with their love for art to tell stories of quantum physics. Smitha Vishveshwara, PhD and Marilena Longobardi, PhD, brought acrobats, musicians and scientists together on stage to display the wonder and power of nature from a subatomic to a cosmic scale. In this episode, host Veronica Combs and the two physicists discuss how the event came together and how hands-on experiences reveal the awe of scientific discovery.

00:00 Opening Ceremony and Global Cooperation

18:35 Challenges and Community in Science

18:47 Maintaining Faith and Perseverance

18:50 The Importance of Community

Professor Smitha Vishveshwara is a faculty member of the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and also affiliated with the university’s Materials Research Laboratory and Beckman Institute. She is a member of the International Year of Quantum steering committee and organized the Quantum Fest celebration at the APS March Meeting. She is also the co-author with her father of the book, “Two Revolutions: Einstein’s Relativity and Quantum Physics.”

In 2021, Marilena Longobardi joined the University of Basel, where she currently serves as Managing Director of the NCCR SPIN. She is recognized as an expert in innovation and international scientific relations and holds multiple leadership roles on various boards. She was named one of the Inspiring Fifty Women in Tech in 2021 and 2023, and was elected an American Physics Society Fellow in 2022. She designed and co-directed with Smitha Vishveshwara, the Quantum Fest for the APS Global Physics Summit in 2025. Marilena holds a Ph.D. in Quantum Physics from the University of Salerno, Italy.

Host Veronica Combs is a quantum tech editor, writer and PR professional. She manages public relations for quantum computing clients as an account manager with HKA Marketing Communications, the #1 agency in quantum tech PR. Veronica joined HKA from TechRepublic and has covered technology, healthcare and business strategy for more than 10 years.

Connect with Veronica on LinkedIn:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/veronicacombs/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

HKA Marketing Communications⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠https://hkamarcom.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠