Austria at the Johns Hopkins Science Diplomacy Summit 2025 in Washington DC
Ambassador Petra Schneebauer (middle left) with the scientists and artists of The Sound of Entanglement, along with the Co-Director of the JHU Science Diplomacy Hub Ona Ambrozaite, Sarah Bamberger (Austrian Cultural Forum Washington Director) and Verena Daughton (Austrian Cultual Forum Washington Cultural Officer).
On the occasion of World Quantum Day on April 14 and the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology 2025, the Austrian Cultural Forum Washington, in cooperation with Johns Hopkins University, presented the performance lecture The Sound of Entanglement – a highlight of this year's Science Diplomacy Summit that left a lasting impression on the audience. The Summit took place from April 14-15, 2025 at the Johns Hopkins Science Diplomacy Hub in Washington.
The second quantum revolution as a musical spectacle: lasers, mirrors, nonlinear crystals—an experimental setup from the high-tech laboratory live on stage at the Bloomberg Center. An Austria-wide team of artists and scientists—musicians Clemens Wenger and Manu Mayr, as well as experimental physicists and theoretical computer scientists Johannes Kofler, Alexander Ploier (University of Linz), and Benjamin Orthner (TU Vienna)—has set itself the goal of making the quantum mechanical phenomenon of entanglement audible and visible. After its acclaimed premiere at Ars Electronica 2024 and another performance at the Vienna Ball of Science in 2025, The Sound of Entanglement was now presented to a US audience for the first time.
The performance was supported as part of the Science Diplomacy Summit by the Vienna University of Technology, the University of Innsbruck, the Johannes Kepler University Linz, and the quantA Cluster of Excellence of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).
During the panel discussion “Ambassadors & Science Diplomacy,” Ambassadors Petra Schneebauer (Austria), Elsie S. Kanza (Tanzania), and Birgitta Tazelaar (Netherlands) discussed the importance of science diplomacy in the 21st century. Ambassador Schneebauer highlighted Austria's active role in this regard, citing the signing of the Artemis Accords and the expansion of OPEN AUSTRIA to the US East Coast (Boston/Washington, D.C.). “International cooperation in the field of science is essential to meet today's global challenges,” Ambassador Schneebauer emphasized.
In their presentation “Quantum Science and Technology in Austria,” Johannes Kofler, Alexander Ploier, and Verena Daughton (Austrian Cultural Forum Washington) presented the quantum research landscape in Austria, the quantA cluster of excellence, the development of the Sound of Entanglement project, and the latest issue of New Austrian, a magazine dedicated to quantum science and research in Austria and in a transatlantic context.
The summit came to a festive close with a Champagne & Chocolate Reception, for which OPEN AUSTRIA East Coast provided the finest Austrian chocolate.
Photos: Austrian Embassy Washington