Image: Ralph Claessen, Ursula Staudinger and Paul Pauli (in the background, centre) and the entire Kitty Q team are delighted with the awards.
vision Lake
Credit: Can Heinrich
The mobile game “Kitty Q – A Quantum Adventure”, developed by the Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat – Complexity and Topology in Quantum Matter, received the “Let’s get digital” award from the German Federal Association of Communication Professionals in the higher education (Bundesverband Hochschulkommunikation) on September 21, 2022. Professor Matthias Vojta, speaker from the Dresden branch of the Cluster of Excellence, received the award at the Paulinum of the University of Leipzig.
At the same time, two more official awards were held in Berlin: one for the “Ideas Competition for International Research Marketing” and another for the “Community Prize”, both projects funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft – DFG). The speaker from the Würzburg Department of the Cluster of Excellence Professor Ralph Claessen, the President of the Technische Universität Dresden Ursula Staudinger, the President of Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg Paul Pauli, as well as the entire project team traveled to attend the event live in person.
“The Kitty Q app is almost a year old, so these awards feel like birthday presents to us,” says Matthias Vojta.
The mobile phone game with its cute, half-dead protagonist Kitty Q was published worldwide in October 2021 in the Apple App and the Google Play Stores, in both a German and an English version. The app was developed by the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat in collaboration with award-winning app designer Philipp Stollenmayer.
The goal: to playfully arouse the interest of children and teenagers from 11 years old in quantum physics. This concept proved very successful, as evidenced by the more than 150,000 worldwide downloads and numerous other awards. Among them are the first place in the “Digital” category at the German children’s media festival “Goldener Spatz”, the title of “Best Mobile Indie Game” at the Valencia Indie Summit and a place in the top 10 European games by an international jury at the Google Play Indie Games Festival.
The “Let’s get digital” prize for science communication
The “Let’s get digital” prize was created in 2021 by the German Federal Association of Communication Professionals in Higher Education with the aim of honoring outstanding digital projects in science communication that emerged during the Corona pandemic.
“We were convinced by almost everything this project stands for… New ideas, diversity and above all, highlighting the relevance of investments in the digital communication of universities. In addition, we all loved continuing to play the game,” reads the jury verdict.
“The app has already won several awards for its storyline and game design. That we are now receiving this award for what we originally wanted to do, which is to increase the visibility of quantum physics to the general public and ‘translate’ our research to make it more accessible, makes us very happy,” says Matthias Vojta.
According to him, it was not an easy undertaking to present the complex research in a way that children and young adults understand. However, it was worth it, and the scientists have learned a lot along the way.
The goal of the gaming app was to turn physics in general and quantum physics in particular into something cool and really fun for the players to experience while increasing their knowledge. The app allows them to enter a visually appealing quantum world with its own set of quirky laws where over 20 exciting riddles, all based on real quantum phenomena, are waiting to be solved. Additional background information tailored to the target group is also available, for example about Albert Einstein, Schrödinger’s cat or Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
Research Marketing Awards in Berlin
“The fact that we are attending two awards ceremonies today is an incredible coincidence and yet it fits so well with the strange phenomena that take place in the quantum world. After all, Schrödinger’s cat, famous outside the field of physics, can also be found in two different states at the same time,” explains Ralph Claessen.
Formulated in 1935 by Erwin Schroedinger, the thought experiment of the cat in the box being dead and alive at the same time became a popular symbol for a principle of quantum mechanics known as superposition: a feature that allows objects to divide into two separate and incompatible ways. states at the same time.
The prize for International Research Marketing, part of the DFG’s Ideas Competition for Research Marketing, and the DFG Community Prize were awarded during a ceremony at the dbb forum Berlin. “Kitty Q” originally won the prize for International Research Marketing, worth €100,000, in 2020. The Community Prize and its prize money of €20,000 were originally awarded in 2021. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the official ceremonies had to take place until 2022.
Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat
The Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat – Complexity and Topology in Quantum Matter is a joint research collaboration of Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg and Technische Universität Dresden, founded in 2019. Nearly 300 scientists from more than 30 countries and four continents are researching topological quantum materials. that reveal surprising phenomena under extreme conditions such as ultra-low temperatures, high pressures or strong magnetic fields. The Cluster of Excellence is funded by the Excellence Strategy of the federal and state governments and is the only cluster in Germany that crosses the federal state borders.
Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of any press releases posted on EurekAlert! by sponsoring institutions or for the use of information through the EurekAlert system.
0 Comments