In celebration of CQT Principal Investigator Leong Chuan Kwek

To honour his 65^th birthday and contributions to establishing quantum science in Singapore, KwekFest drew guests from around the world

The celebratory conference for Leong Chuan Kwek was attended by students, colleagues and collaborators, past and present..

Leong Chuan Kwek is one of the founding Principal Investigators at the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT), here since the Centre was set up in 2007. What’s more, he was one of the small group that kick-started research in quantum information in Singapore – so it was fitting that CQT supported a conference celebrating his 65th birthday.

“KwekFest2026: Entangled Celebrations and Quantum Odyssey” was held 4-6 February. Speakers who worked with Kwek over the decades came from as far as Brazil, Canada, China, Finland, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, South Korea and Japan to share stories and talk science.

The conference closed with a talk by Artur Ekert, CQT’s founding Director. “It is certainly the case that all those attributions – who started and how quantum information science started in Singapore – have nothing to do with me originally. It was Kwek and Kuldip Singh and Choo Hiap Oh and Choy Heng Lai who formed a sort of reading club,” he said.

The group invited Artur to visit in the late ‘90s. “At some point I arrive at the scene, but the question of whether to stay in Singapore and do something here or not, to a large extent depended on ‘do you feel welcome in this place?’,” he said. He gave credit to Kwek, and to Kwek’s friends and colleagues, for making him feel part of their community. Artur was Director from 2007 to 2020 and is now a CQT Distinguished Fellow.

A career of colleagues

The idea for the conference came from Kwek’s PhD graduate Thi Ha Kyaw and former Research Fellow Joonwoo Bae. They recounted how they’d met in 2022, years after becoming CQT alumni, and decided they would like to honour Kwek with an academic birthday party. They put KwekFest in the calendar for 2026.

Thi Ha now does quantum algorithms research for LG Electronics in Toronto and Joonwoo is an Associate Professor in quantum information theory at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. Between them, they reached out to other members of Kwek’s group, past and present, and to Kwek’s collaborators to plan the three-day conference.

The final programme featured some 30 invited talks. Speakers touched on research areas they had in common with Kwek – from one-dimensional atoms to many-body physics, quantum error correction, quantum key distribution, quantum satellite communication, quantum sensing and integrated photonics – and spoke about their personal experiences collaborating with him.

Other guests at the conference and dinner included Kwek’s own PhD advisor and students he taught when he was a Junior College teacher in Singapore, before doing his PhD. In addition to his CQT appointment, Kwek is Professor at the National Institute of Education at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

To kwek

Kwek’s kindness and generosity were a common theme of conversation. Kwek is particularly known for treating colleagues to good meals. Former CQT Research Fellow Victor M. Bastidas, a past collaborator, was inspired to propose the new verb “to kwek”, getting some help from AI to generate a dictionary-like definition that he shared in his presentation.

“After I left CQT, I was so touched by Kwek’s generosity that I became like him. I regularly kwek young students and visitors in our labs in Japan,” he says. Victor now works at NTT Basic Research Labs.

Another theme of the event was bears – featured in many people’s presentations and among Kwek’s birthday gifts. Those who know Kwek know that he collects the cute stuffed creatures, which have turned his office into a cosy bear den. Since the conference, that collection now includes a plush water bear, a Moomin from Finland and one official KwekFest teddy.