I've sat on panels before. This was different. At UConn's first annual Quantum UP! Challenge, I moderated.
Being a panelist means you show up with your answers. Moderating means you're responsible for the quality of the conversation itself — the questions, the pacing, the judgment call of when to interrupt and when to get out of the way. It's a different kind of preparation. And a different kind of presence in the room.
The panel brought together three people who collectively represent a significant share of the institutional architecture behind Connecticut's quantum ambitions.
Pamir Alpay — Vice President for Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, University of Connecticut
Rich Jacob — Associate Vice President for Federal and State Relations, Yale University
David Steuber — Chief of Staff, Department of Economic and Community Development
The conversation covered some real ground. Connecticut has robust industry strength in quantum — the research base, the institutional partnerships, the early-mover advantage. The harder question, and the one that animated the best moments of the discussion, is what it takes to turn that into an economy students actually want to enter. How do you get someone studying law or public policy to see quantum as their problem too? How do you make the ecosystem legible to people who aren't physicists?
I hope that folks left with a cleaner sense of what the actual challenge is: not whether Connecticut can compete in quantum, but whether the people who will power that economy can see themselves in it. Worth asking. Worth asking again.