(QuantumLab.org) The application of an advanced quantum technology to cockroaches has won an international team of researchers an Ig Nobel Prize. Singapore’s Center for Quantum Technologies (CQT) Principal Investigator Rainer Dumke is among the winners announced on 12 September.
The Ig Nobel Prizes, a satirical counterpart to the Nobel prizes, have been presented annually since 1991. They are intended to “celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology”.
Rainer and corresponding author Tomasz Paterek, who are faculty at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), received their award in a ceremony at Harvard University in the United States. They received the 2019 Ig Nobel Biology Prize.
For their prize-winning research, the team used an ‘atomic magnetometer’ to measure the magnetic properties of cockroaches. The magnetometer is a high-precision quantum device, capable of measuring magnetic fields ten billion times weaker than Earth’s magnetic field.
2019 ‘Ig Nobel Biology Prize’ Awarded to Research Applying Quantum Tech to Cockroaches
