key: cord-0666827-ayfz2luc
authors: Sainz, Ana Bel'en
title: Q-Turn: Changing Paradigms In Quantum Science
date: 2022-02-14
journal: nan
DOI: nan
sha: f29182fcc74d5ba14d13830f74442e6b5b69deaa
doc_id: 666827
cord_uid: ayfz2luc

Quantum information is a rapidly-growing interdisciplinary field at the intersection of information science, computer science, mathematics, philosophy, and quantum science, working at the core of our quantum technologies. Regardless of its scientific success, quantum information is not exempt from the intrinsic features that come from the fact that scientists are humans and members of society: both the good and the bad of our social practices leak into the scientific activity. In our scientific community, diversity and equal opportunity problems are particularly difficult to observe due to social, economic, or cultural barriers, often remaining invisible. How can our lack of awareness negatively influence the progress of science in the long term? How can our community grow into a better version of itself? This article reflects on how research events - such as conferences - can contribute to a shift in our culture. This reflection draws on what we learn from Q-Turn: an initiative triggered by postdoctoral researchers to discuss these questions. One of Q-turn's main missions is to foster an inclusive community and highlight outstanding research that may be under-appreciated in other high-impact venues due to systemic biases. As well as a scientific program, Q-turn features talks and discussions on issues that affect the quantum information community, ranging from diversity and inclusion, health and mental health, to workers' rights. In this perspective article, we will consider Q-Turn as an example of how a research community can work to tackle systematic biases, review the successes, and identify further points for development.

The need for change Picture in your mind the image of a scientist, or what is more, of a successful scientist. Ask children to do the same, and maybe make a drawing. What do we all see? In many cases, something that resembles Emmett "Doc" Brown from Back to the Future. In general, we see that middle-age white man, with no real obligations or responsibilities, just their drive and mild-obsession to work on their research, day and night. Younger generations might have a different picture in mind though: that of a socially-awkward Sheldon Cooper, with no real-life struggles, whose unintentional borderline offensive behavior is perceived as funny. This perception of a scientist, built from entertainment and media exposure, is not representative of those who have the potential and interest to become scientists, however in a large proportion of cases it is not very far from the truth.

Quantum science did not end up by accident being a field of research dominated by white-male from the global north; several factors -that go beyond the scope of this perspective -contributed to this. However, the narrow perspective that like-minded people bring to science may arguably hinder its progress. For the good of science -and, more importantly, the well-being of the people carrying it out -change needs to happen.

What is it then that needs to change, and how do we make it happen? Short answer: the basic structure of the academic and scientific system, to account for scientists being human beings living in our far-from-perfect world. Of course, this short answer is an overly simplified and highly idealistic one. How can we do better? Spoiler alert: we do not have the full answer yet -but we have already started taking the first steps to trigger change.

Interest in science develops within curious people since early ages. By the time we reach university, a door opens for us to a whole new world of knowledge, and it is fascinating. But as time passes, and career progresses, you start seeing beyond first impressions, and noticing your bright classmates quitting, your colleague not coming back after maternity leave, professional opportunities slipping through your hands -a variety of small yet powerful daily facts that yell at you that you don't belong (or that if you decide to stay, that it is not going to be easy). This is the context in which many early-career researchers in quantum science find themselves, and which brought together Yelena Guryanova, Jara Juana Bermejo-Vega, and Ana Belén Sainz back in the mid 2010's.

Part of the problem is the lack of a proper safe space in which to discuss these issues. We remember once attending a faculty of physics compulsory training seminar on 'implicit bias', and noticing our white male colleagues coming out of the session acknowledging the issue. So, what was different? Why did this concept that we spent so many lunch breaks trying to communicate now finally get to them? Well, this time it was presented by an expert quoting data from studies, rather by the young colleagues they meet everyday at lunch quoting instances of their personal experience. And then the idea clicked, and the seed of Q-turn started germinating: what could we achieve if we scaled this up?

Back in 2017 the idea of Q-turn took form, and the journey of this peculiar workshop (founded by Yelena Guryanova, Jara Juana Bermejo-Vega, and Ana Belén Sainz) began. Q-turn is a unique international quantum information workshop series. Its core mission is to foster an inclusive community and highlight outstanding research that may be underappreciated in other high-impact venues due to systemic biases. Q-turn aims to facilitate a dialogue in the community over issues that affect us as a society, collectively making progress to resolve them. To this aim, Q-turn features an awareness program in addition to the focused quantum science program. Q-turn's awareness program promotes diversity, equity, inclusion, intersectionality, responsible research, workers' rights, as well as physical and mental health in quantum science and technology. So far there have been two editions of the Q-turn workshop, one in Florianópolis, Brazil, in 2018 [1], and one online edition in 2020 [2] . Q-turn originated as a response to a need, hence its peculiar form with strong emphasis on community issues. However, not every conference needs to have such focus in order to contribute meaningfully to a positive shift in our scientific culture. In the next section we comment on a few specific actions that conferences can endorse as best practices to help the community develop.

Besides its unique awareness program (details of which can be found in the next section), Q-turn takes specific actions during its organisation and implementation, which not only make the workshop a fresh gust of air for underrepresented groups in quantum science, but, hopefully, will also positively influence our quantum scientific community. These actions are not necessarily specific to the Q-turn workshop, and hence may also be implemented at other conferences and scientific venues. Examples of these specific actions are the following:

• Inclusive Atmosphere: one of the first steps is to make the members of the community feel safe and welcome. In Q-turn we make a strong conscious effort to foster an inclusive atmosphere. Regarding the building where the event is hosted, we pay special attention to choosing an accessible barrier free venue and setting up gender neutral bathrooms. In addition, we work towards securing a diverse cast of invited speakers. For example, regarding gender diversity, in the first edition of the Q-turn workshop we had, in the scientific program, 1 man, 4 women, and 1 non-binary person, while the awareness program consisted of 4 women and 4 men. Moreover, three invited speakers were known members of the LGBTQ community.

• Code of Conduct: we implement a code of conduct to get through personal and cultural barriers, and so set up the standard for acceptable professional conduct. This code of conduct has a clear and accessible protocol for reporting violations of it, which pays special attention towards protecting the well-being and anonymity of the involved parties.

• Diversity in Committees and Presenters: we make a strong and conscious effort to having a diverse set of organisers, program committee members, and invited speakers, in terms of gender, ethnicity, geographical location, and area of quantum research. We devote on average more than a year to come up with suggestions for speakers and committee members, and make a careful assessment and selection. Allowing plenty of time for this is crucial for fighting unconscious biases.

• Review Process for Scientific Contributions: our review process is in constant revision to fight against systematic biases and unhealthy work practices. Our particular actions so far are: (i) assure representation of minority fields of research by having a diverse and representative program committee (PC); (ii) improve the quality of the submissions' assessments by giving each PC member a low number (about 5) of submissions to review, and by having each PC chair handle a low number of assessments -this is achieved by recruiting a large number of PC members (≥ 50) and of PC chairs (4 were recruited for the 2020 edition of Q-turn); (iii) fight unconscious bias in the review process by allowing plenty of time (ideally 2 months) for the review process; (iv) fight against exploitative work relationships by discouraging the use of subreviewers.

• Mobility: we allow for plenty of time (we aim for three months) between the 'notification for authors' and the start of the workshop, so that presenters have time to apply for the necessary travel visas.

• Travel Grants: we implement a travel grants programme to cover the cost of travel, accommodation, and in some cases maintenance, for selected participants. We target these grants to students and young post-docs from underrepresented groups (gender, ethnicity, geographical location, area of quantum research).

The Q-turn workshop features not only a quantum science programme, but also an 'awareness' programme, the latter being the main focus of this section. In the two editions of the Q-turn workshop, there was roughly a 50/50 split in invited talks between the quantum and the awareness programmes. Such awareness sessions are a special feature of Q-turn, but may also be implemented in other quantum scientific venues even in the form of a single invited talk or panel discussion. Organisers of established conference series might be wary of providing a space for open discussions in such topics -and it should be done with the care it deserves so it happens in a safe space -but we hope that, with time, speaking about community issues becomes normalised.

For context, before elaborating on the specifics of Q-turn's awareness programme, let me briefly describe its quantum programme. Q-turn's quantum science program highlights top-quality experimental and theoretical work on quantum information technology and foundations. The fields covered include quantum foundations (causality, thermodynamics, generalised probabilistic theories), quantum communication and cryptography (algorithms, error correction, simulation), and models of quantum computation (quantum complexity theory, estimation and measurement, entanglement theory). The details of the quantum science programme go beyond the scope of this perspective.

Q-turn's awareness program promotes diversity, equity, inclusion, responsible research, workers' rights, as well as physical and mental health in quantum science and technology. The awareness sessions (in the form of presentations or panel discussions) are run by experts on equal opportunities, inclusion and diversity, focused on the following key areas:

• Representation (race; gender equality; non-binary; intersectionality; marginalised groups) • Conflict (unconscious bias; micro-aggressions; harassment) • Rights (work conditions; labour rights; contracts) • Health (health and mental health in academia)

The first edition of the Q-turn featured three awareness talks plus a panel discussion, whereas its second edition featured six awareness sessions. The details of these topics, whose tins of worms we have opened, are the following:

• Implicit Bias: Havi Carel (University of Bristol, UK) presented a talk on "Implicit bias, microaggressions and chilly climates: how can we improve equality and inclusion in academia?". The purpose of the talk was to increase the awareness of factors that make our work environment less welcoming for some and suggest practical ways to change that. Here we were made aware of implicit bias and stereotype threat, as well as of the problems caused by them. We also discussed the causes of 'chilly climates' within academia, caused by these factors, as well as microaggressions.

• Working in Academia: it is usually argued that 'scientists follow their passion'this is often used as leverage to expect people to work long hours, during weekends and holidays, for little pay (and no extra-hours remunerations). Such practices not only impact in the workers' health and well-being, but -surprisingly for somealso hinders productivity. Ariel Bendersky (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina) conducted an open discussion, titled "Working in academia. The good, the bad, and the ugly", on the toxic academic work culture, where he provided a general overview on working rights in academia. We learned about collective agreements and unions, and how false self-identification plays a role in academia: astonishingly, and sometimes unconsciously, science workers refuse to identify themselves as workers.

We also discussed how 'academic excellence' is a dangerous concept that enables a way to deny labour rights

• Socio-economical Inclusion: socio-economical factors play a pivotal role in implicitly post-selecting scientists that come from privileged backgrounds -case in point, it is not easy to progress in your academic career when you need to work two jobs and care for a struggling family. Renato Pedrosa (Unicamp, Campinas, Brazil) provided us with enlightening thoughts in his talk "Social inclusion in higher education in Brazil: is merit and quality at peril?", where he discussed these issues in the context of higher education in Brazil [3] . Since at least 2003 there had been frequent debates in Brazil about merit and its impact on the quality of education, both inside and outside of academic circles. It was then when the first public universities adopted affirmative action programmes to increase the chances of poor youngsters, including black students, of being admitted to their programs. Such affirmative actions were triggered either by the own initiative of the Universities (like University of Brasilia and Unicamp), or mandated by the state and, later, federal law. Pedrosa presented us the data from studies on the impact of the affirmative-action policies developed on the quality of education provided by public higher education institutions (HEIs) in Brazil.

• Black Community in Academia: a brilliant panel of researchers opened our eyes to a myriad of perspectives that white researchers from the global north (the mostfunded community quantum scientists) might have never considered. This session was led by Bárbara Rosa (Cambridge Graphene Centre, UK), Carlos Parra (Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany), Cornelius Mduduzi Masuku (Purdue University, US), Juan David González Calderon (Uniremington Medellín, Colombia), Katemari Rosa (Federal University of Bahia, Brazil), and Mathys Rennela (Leiden University, The Netherlands). Topics that we touched upon included the historical systematic bias that promotes achievements by white people, and appropriates and rebrands black and middle eastern cultural and scientific achievements as outcomes of the white community. We were also made aware of a variety of harassment behavior and micro-aggressions that black people endure on a daily basis in our academic system.

• Science is Not a Safe Space: the scientific community is not exempt from harassing behaviours. Be it due to 'cultural differences' or the toxic working culture within the hierarchical academic structure, harassment is present and experienced by many scientists ( especially from minority groups) since early stages in their career. Harassment does not restrict to sexual harassment, but it also encompasses other types of abuse such as a supervisor over-working their students with tasks they are not meant to be doing. Ultimately, the big power imbalance and lack of awareness and acknowledgement of the problems, foster an environment where harassment leaks into the scientific work. A panel of researchers and activists led an emotionally-challenging yet eye-opening discussion on the topic of (sexual) harassment, based on studies and on personal experiences. The panel was formed by Emma Chapman (Imperial College London, UK), Ruth Oulton (University of Bristol, UK), and Sarah Kaiser (Q# Community, US).

• Inclusion of People with Disabilities: Sofia Qvafort (University College London and Imperial College London, UK) opened our eyes to the problem of inclusion in the academic system of people with disabilities. In her talk "Disability & Academia" she highlighted some of the challenges faced by disabled academics and what we can do as individuals and on a framework-level to make academia a better place for everyone. Se also shared with us her personal experience on studying and working in physics as a person with a visual impairment.

• Mental Health in Scientific Research: when spelled out, the low-quality of academics' mental health might not come as a surprise -a highly-competitive time-demanding job, with poor (usually fixed-term) work contracts, and a mobility policy that scrapes people from their support networks. When adding to this the personal challenges that each individual has, together with social taboos that prevent people from timely getting help, one may wonder how much progress would science experience if the main muscle of its scientific workforce was better looked after. Michelle Reynolds (University of Cambridge Staff Counselling Service, UK) and Senaida Hernández Santana (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain) walked us through an enlightening session on these topics. Interestingly, mental health struggles are more common than we think within academia [4] , and some studies have estimated scientists' metal health quality to be on similar footing to that of healthcare practitioners [5] .

• Science Communication: how to present your scientific findings and your visions for future research is a crucial feature of scientific activity: it impacts how you scientists and research fields are perceived by society, and vitally, how much funding is available for each field. Incidentally, intensive publicity of a particular field of topic (hype) -even beyond what one may realistically expect of it -arguably happens, among others, in the field of quantum technologies. Tara Roberson (Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems, Australia) discussed the advantages and dangers of hype, how it may help to advance support for science and technology, and left us with plenty of open question on the drawbacks of hype.

• Ethics in Quantum Research: being driven by people, quantum research is not exempt from ethical considerations. These range across a wide spectrum, from personal scientific conduct in the workplace, to fundraising techniques and technologies' development. Emma McKay (McGill University, Canada) walked us through implicit costs of scientific research that we usually don't think twice about -how does our research impact the environment and our resources? How might our scientific activity promote or be sustained by colonialist practices? In this talk, followed by an intense discussion session, we started touching the tip of the iceberg.

Already at the first edition of the Q-turn workshop we were overwhelmed by the support from the scientific community, in particular by students and early-career researchers. Indeed, in Q-turn 2020, more than 50% of the participants were PhD students or postdocs, 20% pre-doctoral students, and less than 20% had permanent contracts. Q-turn 2018 hosted 114 participants, which is a great success if compared to the number of participants at similar scientific venues, such as the Conference on the Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication and Cryptography (TQC) -61 participants in 2014, 65 in 2015, and 104 in 2016. Q-turn 2020, which happened online due to the covid-19 pandemic, received over 900 registrations. We hosted over 600 participants on slack, and had 170 inspiring contributions (awareness sessions, invited and contributed talks, and posters).

In Q-turn 2018 a wide distribution of participants from international institutions in all continents was observed. The biggest representation per country was Brazil, followed by other countries in Latin America, showing that Q-turn 2018 succeeded in engaging with the local scientific community. Q-turn 2020 took the covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity to work on geographic inclusion, and we hosted the conference so that it could be enjoyed by people all across the globe -we hosted more than 50 hours of event across three time zones. Remarkably, participants joined from institutions over about 50 countries, and an estimate of the distribution of 'country of affiliation' per region is around: Oceania 3.2%, Africa 3.5%, Latin America 8.8 %, Asia 16%, Canada and USA 23.5%, and Europe 35%.

The results of the participation survey that we sent after the events were also very positive. The awareness programmes were a success, and participants even suggested new topics for the future (Mental Health was a frequent suggestion in Q-turn 2018).

Regarding gender participation, the survey collected at the end of Q-turn 2018 (74 respondents) showed that the percentage of women and gender minorities participants in Q-turn 2018 was much higher than in typical quantum information workshops: 31.5% women, 2.7% non-binary or transgender, and 65.8% men. Remarkably, a very similar ratio was observed among the contributed talks. Indeed, we regard the high participation of women and gender minorities as one of the greatest achievements of Q-turn 2018, in particular because the workshop did not have any gender quota. Among the responses in the survey, we received many positive comments about the gender ratio and its impact towards creating an inclusive atmosphere -a female professor even declared "this is the first conference where I felt that I belong". In Q-turn 2020, statistics drawn from the registrations forms show the following distribution for the participants preferred pronouns: she/her 28%, they/them 2%, other 1%, he/him 65%.

Additional data from on the participation and satisfaction survey for Q-turn 2018 are presented in Appendix A, while Appendix B presents the corresponding data for Q-turn 2020. In addition, Appendix C presents a representative selection of comments that Q-turn 2018 and Q-turn 2020 participants left within the corresponding satisfaction surveys.

The Q-turn workshop has opened the door to a unique opportunity for improving science: it provides the space where to make people aware of the issues that hinder our scientific activity, and where to leverage bright people (our quantum scientists) to brainstorm solutions. Q-turn also provides a unique space where to scientifically interact with other scientific communities within your own research field, which has the potential to considerably increase the quality and impact of the scientific activity. Nonetheless, there are many challenges towards making the best use of the doors that the Q-turn workshop opens, and here I discuss a few that we have strongly encountered in these past five years. Some of these challenges are specific to a relatively young conference series, although others may be experienced at quantum scientific events in general.

• Our Own Biases: how to make Q-turn grow beyond the close environment of the original Q-turn players? For Q-turn 2020 we implemented an anonymous way for people to suggest invited speakers and topics for both the quantum and the awareness programmes. This was a good first step, but we did not receive as many suggestions as we had hoped. We need the active participation of the broad quantum community to make a fair and representative selection in the long run.

• Participation: we have substantial support and participation from young members of the community, but this means we are also lacking the expertise and influence of established scientists, professors, and group leaders -those that have the best footing to take risks and implement change. Support from such players could also make Q-turn an attractive venue for people who are not yet convinced of Q-turns scientific quality, probably due to systematic and unconscious biases. How to engage these parts of the community is still an open question, and at the moment we have tackled the active and worldwide promotion of our activities. We set up a mailing list (currently with 220 members) to keep interested scientists and Q-turn enthusiasts up to date on the activities related to Q-turn. Our events are also advertised in international mailing lists and on posters and notice boards in universities and institutes around the world. The Q-turn workshop is also promoted during talks at outreach events and conferences.

• Funding: a main aim of the Q-turn workshop is to bring down the barriers set up by privilege: it is crucial that our workshop is attended by minority groups, which in many cases do not have access to funds for conference attendance. Hence, Q-turn has aimed to provide financial support for participants, and minimise conference fees. This requires an immeasurable amount of fundraising work, which has not proven as successful as we had hoped. A main barrier here is the lack of 'prestige' in such a young conference series, especially given the early-career stages of the founding members and conference organisers. We need funding bodies to see beyond their usual checkpoints and start to substantially support activities like ours.

• Reluctance to Change: this is the hardest challenge that we face. It may not come as a surprise that not everyone is enthusiastic about the activities of Q-turn. To name one, it seems we will need years before the existence of codes of conduct becomes commonplace and cease to be a contentious issue. We need people to not take our topics personally, and keep an open mind towards the needs of the always-changing scientific community. Equal opportunities initiatives are not meant to threaten or belittle privileged groups, but rather to raise awareness of, and trigger action to overcome, the issues that we face as a community -and we need the support and involvement of our more privileged colleagues to make the community a better place.

The Q-turn workshop's journey has taught us many lessons, and not only for the Q-turn initiative: lessons for research events in quantum science, and lessons for the quantum science community itself. Scientific events in general play a key role in shaping the community and the way we do science, and so have a golden opportunity to help trigger change. As I have discussed in this article, there are many specific actions that scientific conferences and events other than Q-turn can also implement; actions that do not incur extra costs but that can already help, such as most of the points in Section 2. In addition, scientific events can consider generating a space for raising awareness and discussing community issues, such as it has been done at the 'Bristol Quantum Information Technologies' workshop series since 2019 and the 'Quantum Correlations, Contextuality and All That Again n ' workshop series since 2017.

From a community point of view, a comforting lesson to learn is that 'we are not alone in this'. The proportion of scientists that are keen for change and in need of it is more than we think and more than we can see. As a community, we need to become agents of our scientific practices, to give change a chance to happen. The Q-turn workshop is a clear example of that.

Throughout our Q-turn journey, we have sparked the flame of awareness and change. We have only touched upon the tip of the iceberg, and there is still a lot more to learn and discuss. More importantly, we are yet to see the impact of the Q-turn workshop on concrete actions aimed at implementing positive change. For this, the involvement of and support from higher-up players is vital. It is, however, reassuring and hopeful that there is a seed in the community that is motivated to holistically improve quantum science, and moreover, that there is a place -Q-turn -for them to engineer change from. Participation of senior scientists at Q-turn 2018 was satisfactorily high: 48.6% of participants were either postdocs (29.7%) or professor level (18.9%) researchers. Students also highly attended the event: 32.4% of participants where PhD candidates and 13.5% were master students. See Fig. 1 for a graphical representation. The percentage of women and gender minorities among participants of Q-turn 2018 was much higher than in typical quantum information workshops. This is strongly supported by data obtained via a feedback & satisfaction survey with 65% participation (74 respondents). Among all respondents, 31.5% were women and 2.7% were nonbinary or transgender, while 65.8% were men. Remarkably, a very similar ratio was observed among talk presenters, with 31.8% women and 4.5% transgender or nonbinary, while 63.8% were men. Many participants, organizers, and program committee members appraised the high ratio of women and gender minorities -one of the greatest achievements of the conference. Figures 3 and 4 present graphical representations of these gender ratios, for participants and presenters respectively. 

Participants provided feedback and expressed their satisfaction with the event via a feedback and satisfaction survey that had 65% participation (74 responses). Below I present a summary of the responses, which show the outstanding levels of satisfaction with the scientific quality of the talks and discussions as well as the the overall organization.

Appendix A.2.1. Satisfaction with the workshop Figure 5 shows the level of satisfaction of the participants with the overall event. Remarkably, 71.6% rated their satisfaction to be maximal (5 out of 5) and 24.3% rated their satisfaction to be high. Regarding the scientific program, most participants indicated very high or high levels of satisfaction with the quality of the talks and poster session. In particular, the invited talks and the awareness program received outstanding appraisal, beyond our own best expectations.

Satisfaction with organizational aspects of the workshop, including the reviewing process was also high.

Regarding the travel support program, slightly lower levels of satisfaction were observed: most participants were either highly satisfied or expressed average satisfaction. We believe the lower satisfaction is due to the high selectivity of the grant program (25%). This also points out the tremendous need for such travel support programs to exist, and highlights their importance to ensure true diversity and inclusion: data gathered suggest participants from less privileged institutions and from under-represented groups in quantum science truly need this support in order to present their scientific work at events and have an equal opportunity to succeed in their scientific careers.

The data regrading satisfaction presented in this subsection are graphically represented in Fig. 6 . Figure 7 presents the percentages related to the participants' country of affiliation. We see that the strategic location of Q-turn in Brazil enabled a significant participation from the Americas. We see that scientists from Europe also attended the workshop. However, we see a hole in participation from Asia, Oceania, and Africa. We believe this to be a combination of how long/expensive the trip is from those places to Brazil, as well as the high need for travel support that some institutions from countries in those continents have. 

Appendix B.1. Participation details Q-Turn 2020 featured 902 registered participants, which highlights the big opportunity for participation enabled by the virtual mode of the conference (early stages of the covid-19 pandemic before the screen-exhaustion phase). In this subsection I present the statistical data on the profile of registered participants, based on the 714 (out of 902) registration forms that consented to the data being used for statistical purposes.

In Q-turn 2020 we dived more deeply into the different types of career paths and stages within. Even though a significant part of the participants were active in Academia, we also identified participants from the industrial, policy, and media sectors. Figure 8 presents a graphical depiction of the data.

In Q-turn 2020 we turned out attention to the topic of the participants research, as well as their type of scientific activity (experimental, theoretical, or both). Regarding topics, the most represented activities were "Quantum information theory", "Quantum Foundations", and "Quantum computation and simulation, algorithms, and complexity", accounting for 50.56%, 42.44%, and 37.68%, respectively, of the replies. Figure 9 presents a graphical depiction of the data. Notice that the computed percentage is relative to the total number of participants, since selection of multiple choices was possible. Regarding the type of research, the majority of participants where engaged into theoretical research. This is compatible with the geographical profile of the participants, given the high expense it is to run an experimental lab in this type of quantum science. Figure 10 presents a graphical depiction of the collected data.

Appendix B.1.3. Gender profile Q-turn 2020 assessed the gender profile of participants by their preferred pronouns. We see that the percentage of participants that use the pronouns "he/him" roughly coincide with the percentage of men attending Q-turn 2018. This is quite remarkable, given that the geographical profile of the conference is quite different in the two editions, and that the number of responses analysed in Q-turn 2020 is about an order of magnitude higher than in Q-turn 2018. This seems to suggest that these numbers might represent the community overall, or at least the overall quantum community curious about community building. Figure 11 presents a graphical depiction of the collected data. Q-turn 2020 focused on two geographical aspects of the registered participants: their country of affiliation and their country of nationality. Regarding country of affiliation, 34.16% of the participants came from Europe, 23.52% from the USA and Canada, 9.38% from Central Asia, 8.82% from Latin America, 4.8% from East Asia, 3.5% from Africa, 3.22% from West Asia, and 3.22% from Oceania. We see that this geographical distribution is quite different from that of Q-turn 2018; I believe this to be due to the virtual format of the workshop, as well as the lack of necessity for travel support schemes. Figure 14 presents a detailed graphical representation of affiliation by country.

Regarding nationality of the participants, 33.74% are from Europe, 21.29% are from Central Asia, 19.6% are from Latin America, 5.46% are from East Asia, 4.62% are from the USA and Canada, 2.66% are from Africa, 2.38% are from Oceania, and 1.68% are from West Asia. The countries where most of our participants came from are India, Brazil, and England, respectively. We also observe some amusing features, such as 24% of the participants come from the USA and Canada, whilst only 5% are nationals of those countries (and may even work in a different one). Figure 15 presents a detailed graphical representation of nationality by country.

Appendix B.1.5. How did you learn about Q-turn 2020?

We also asked the participants how they learned about the Q-turn 2020 workshop. Word-of-mouth was a main channel of information transmission, accounting for the answers of 64.29% of the participants. Different social media channels, in turn, reached 23.39% of the participants. We see that, at the moment, active community effort plus Twitter are the two main avenues that made Q-turn 2020 visible to the community. Figure  12 presents a detailed graphical representation of the different information channels. • It was great! Good job! • Thank you for this great event (you will probably get that a lot i. Here are a few things that I think could have been better: having places/blackboards for discussions.

Having blackboards for talks. A bit more quantum cryptography :) • I really liked the idea of the conference and the execution. But I think there should be more funding, specially for the minorities (for example, I got no funding, while my friend (man) got funding). I also would like that the next Q-turn conferences keep being in underdeveloped countries • I liked the conference very much, but i missed the discussion about mental health issues in academia. • You've done a great job, and you should be proud. I could have used some more detailed information on the website about (for example) how long the talks are supposed to be, and about whether you need a visa, but that's it, really. • It was the best congress I went to! very well organized! with very good social and gender talks :) • One of the best conferences I've been to organization wise : ) • The atmosphere was good and pleasant and the focus on the social aspects of academia too. Even if a discussion on mental health was missing and none of the people who have the power in the institutions were present (that would have been important for an immediate social impact). Bad aspects: There were not many opportunities for discussing/ starting collaborations (no black boards, nothing (neither space nor time) to really encourage constructive discussions). Not very high quality of most of invited talks.

• more experimental talks would be great, timeliness of announcements could be improved, • I find it very interesting and I am looking forward for the next Q-Turn.

• Very grateful to all of you ;) • Q-Turn was great! Thank you for your hard work in putting together such a groundbreaking event -both academically and socially. Thank you for providing a safe space to talk about a lot of the issues that worry a lot of us, and thank you for planting the seed to fix them. Can't wait for Q-Turn 2020! I'd like to provide some suggestions (though I fully appreciate they might be hard to implement!): it would be nice to have a room for discussion/work/hanging out. The poster session room was nice and spacious, if a bit loud (though I have never been at a poster session which wasn't throat-breaking). Finally: my deepest admiration to you all for your courage in running this highly non-standard event! It made me feel like something *can* be done about the many issues with academia. • The awareness program was so important. Thank you soo much and keep up the awesome work!! • Thanks very much for this conference! This was lovely! • Thanks a lot, the conference has broadened my perspective on the scientific community. The quality of the contributions was excellent! • I thanks the organizers for the great idea and Initiative they had organizing this event. As a participant I take home a wonderful experience and a bunch of ideas to try in my institution and country. • Had a great time! I very much appreciated the overall atmosphere, the awareness program and the duration given to the talks, keep this up! • What i missed most where the abstract and whole schedule program printed when we received the folder. • I found the conference very good both with respect to the scientific program as well as the awareness program. I have a comment concerning the awareness part, as much as I think it is important to talk about the issues of academia, I think it is also important to take action regarding some of the issue without which the whole concept becomes a bit of a posh complaining circle. I really hope that concrete things will emerge from this workshop. And yes, I know this probably mean I should do something to change stuff too. Just wanted to put this out there and I really hope I am not the only one to think so concretely. • Keep up the good work! • I'm really happy of being able to attend the workshop and I was able do it because of the finantial support you gave me, otherwise I would't be able to go. As a PhD student that dosn't know what wants to do when I finnish it, the talks were really helpfull because of the variety of subjects, and also the talks were organizes in a way that helped me to understand subjects I'm not familiar with, so I'm very satisfied with that part of the workshop! As for the awarness program, I think it was great that you included that. Even if you can't dedicate a lot of time to treat those subjects, is really helpful to remind people that the problems are there, that there is a lot of people going through that and that we have to do something. So thank you very much for all the work that you put into this workshop, everything was perfectly organized and you were very kind and helpful when we needed something. THANK YOU! • I thought that discussions about the eurocentric character of academia was lacking.

• The workshop was fantastic, very enjoyable and had a lovely atmosphere. I think the discussion sessions could be a little longer and include less content (maybe focusing around a question discussed prior in some sort of online Qturn forum?). • The workshop was really very good. I congratulate all the organizers, the committees and collaborators. There are always things to improve, but in this first edition of Q-Turn the enormous effort of those behind was evident. Thank you very much for the financial help to attend and I hope to see you in the next edition. • Very stimulating week, especially the awareness program. I had many discussions with people about how to reorganise science, I think it's very overdue and feel like taking action!! Thanks • Q-turn was one of the best conferences I have participated.

• It would be great if the time of the beginning and ending of the event was available earlies to the participants. This way, we could chose more suitable flights. • The panel lacked a moderator, it ended up with a flavour of group therapy.

• I am very happy and satisfied with the conference, both from an academic and from a social perspective. I think the awareness program was a great success and would love to see this initiative in other conferences. The panel discussion was also great, but maybe it would be good to have more time and also maybe make this discussion a bit more "horizontal" in order for everyone to participate more and really make it a discussion. Finally, I would like to thank everyone involved in the organization for making the conference so interesting and welcoming, I hope this is just the starting point for many more Q-Turns! • Amazing conference! I think the predominance of young and not-so-hyped researchers contributed for the good environment as well.

• Although the organizers asked me about food restrictions, there wasn't nothing to eat beyond fruit. I can't eat gluten and lactose. • Great Venue the city and the workshop were great! • It was a great experience, both academically and personally. I am very grateful to have attended. • It was very fun and full of inspiring people! Great experience! • First of all I want to say that I am really glad I have attended the first edition of Q-Turn. So, organizers, thank you very much for putting together a high level scientific conference and awareness discussions. I have a few comments concerning the awareness/panel discussion: 1) As I mentioned during the discussions: I think the awareness program could bring up a bit more of the particular issues of the country that is hosting the conference. Since there is many topics to bring awareness to and there is no time to discuss all of them with one event, I think it is a great opportunity to use the fact that the conference is happening in a particular country to focus on issues that are more problematic in that particular place. So as to bring more data related to that particular country (instead of US and european only data) 2) For the panel discussion I got the feeling that more time was necessary. Or maybe the panel can be focused on a very specific issue. • A comfortable quiet space would be helpful, also transparency on how travel funding was allocated (the contribution allocation was v transparent! Thanks) • Qturn was a great event. Congratulations on the initiative! • Congratulations for the initiative. As a suggestion, I would be in favour of a quota/affirmative action for contributed talks. Just as a possible bias effect: how many contributed-talk speakers were not affiliated (or presenting results including a time when they were affiliated) to "western" economically central countries? I guess the answer is two... If we also discard cases with co-authors from those countries, probably one... I think I don't need to talk about role playing models to people like you, so, in the next edition, as well as making sure to have a reasonable balance about genders, let us hope to have also geographic diversity, including some representatives from South Asia (which does not mean Singapore, in this case). • Thank you! It was an excellent week and I'm still processing everything I learned;

walked away with plenty of food for thought. A few suggestions: 1) there should be more smaller group break-out sessions so that those who aren't comfortable speaking in front of big crowds may more actively participate 2) It was great that the sessions were not overlapping (particularly regarding the awareness program) so everyone could attend as much as possible 3) it's not just on you, the organizers, to continue sharing resources regarding the awareness program. Use all the participants! Perhaps there could be a discussion board on the website that participants (or anyone?) could add links to various resources that others may be interested in (e.g. interesting twitter accounts, awareness speakers, etc.). 4) Media coverage! This was an incredible example of diversity in the field and it should be covered. Even after the fact (though next time also cover it before/during). If you would like assistance in doing this now, please let me know. 5) Guidelines/rules handed out before hand regarding expectations of participation. Also include tips on how to present (e.g. practice the talk with your tongue out of your mouth to learn to slow down). 6) Hand out abstracts and schedule further in advance so participants so prep appropriately. 7) More interactive sessions. As it's called a workshop, I expected more along these lines. Ex in terms of awareness: privilege walk. Ex in terms of technical: chalk talks, demonstrations, etc. Overall, though, I was quite impressed with the whole week. • I really enjoy the experience of being part of q-turn. It would be fantastic if your inclusive activities be part of next scientific events!! Q-turn was revolutionary!!! Congratulations and thanks for all the organizers! • This has been one of the best conferences I have ever attended. Congratulations on having organized it so well and thank you very much for having done it, and for having granted me financial support, without which I couldn't have attended the really nice and interesting workshop.

• It would have been nice if the schedule was not so jam packed :) • Good job! This is the model of conference worth further developing and being followed by others. • A suggestion for the review process: it would be great to give authors the opportunity to respond to criticisms and consider it for the final decision. • I enjoyed the conference a lot, both the academic talks and the awareness programme.

My only minor criticisms are that when free alcohol is provided at events, it would be nice to also have free non-alcoholic drinks. And when bussing people to a far-off venue for the conference dinner, it would be good to have some options for people who don't want to stay until the end of the event: I appreciate this is logistically complicated, but even a designated local person who helps people arrange taxis/ubers would have been useful: I talked to several people who wanted to go home early and couldn't because of lack of internet. But these are relatively minor issues, overall this was the most enjoyable conference I've attended so far. • First of all, I would like to congratulate the organizers of the event for its successful realization and for the innovative idea to bring awareness discussion to the community. Second, as mentioned during the conference, it would be nice to bring other topics to the discussion, such as mental health issues and journal publication policies.

Here is a representative selection of comments left by the Q-turn 2020 participants in the satisfaction survey.

• Thanks for organising the event • Thanks!! See you in two years :) • Q-TURN 2020 was really the best and best-organized online conference I attended this year. Thank you! • You all did an amazing job getting this off the ground this year! Looking forward to next time :) • Thank you for the initiative with the awareness talks and inclusivity. What you are doing is incredibly valuable. • Thanks for this amazing event, It was a great experience.

• Overall, my difficulty with the platforms did not sour my experience of the conference. Thank you for your hard work and keeping scientific discussion alive during these difficult times! • Thank you very much for organising! It was great overall :D • It was an amazing experience, it shows how much work was done and it paid off brilliantly. I think the virtuality made it more accessible since not everybody can actually travel. Also, even though it's nice to travel and actually meet people, it's enviromentally friendlyer to save all those plane travels, and this congress showed how well can a virtual congress work and how little it's missed. I think we can learn how to socialize and network this way and then the balance will be undoubtablly positive. • Thank you! This was my first time at Q-Turn and I will attend again if possible.

I liked the scientific program, and I found the awareness talks really informative and necessary. Also, I could learn just from the organization itself with the code of conduct, the guidelines to make accessible posters and talks, etc. Great example! • thank you for your work really glad there is a space to discuss how to improve academia • I just wanted to mention a particularly depreciative (without explanation) comment in one review of my Abtract for talk (which was then selected as a poster).

Considering the pleasant and inclusive character of the workshop I thought it might be a relevant comment. Besides that, just wanted to thank all of you for your great work • I think Q-turn was fantastic. In the past (before the pandemic) I was a bit pessimistic towards online conferences but for Q-turn in particular, after having participated in this one, I think having it at least streamed online might be the best format for the future. I know many people who benefited from the conference who would not have been able to join otherwise. Plus, in my experience it was extremely well organised. Many thanks to everyone involved in the organisation! The only small criticism I have is that it was a bit confusing to figure out how all the platforms worked on the first day, I was caught by surprise realising there were so many. That being said, I quickly figure out how to use all of them, and I think that was the case for most people I spoke too. But a bit more info in the first emails we got could have been helpful. For future Q-turns, I think something that could be nice (maybe not easy to implement) is to have a bit more diversity on the places where the people in the awareness sessions come from. I got the impression somehow that a lot of it was focused in the UK, or also US and Australia, with exception of the "Black community in academia" session. In my opinion the awareness sessions were extremely interesting and pertinent, this is just something I believe could continue to be improved in the future. • Lovely event! really appreciate that there were three sessions per day (it was almost like attending three events in one!) so that we all could manage to attend live at least one session. There are other famous online conferences which are unfortunately not doing this, and it is difficult to engage like that. I also saw that there were quite a few people promoting PhD/postdoc positions in Slack, it could be nice to have a dedicated space for this? like open positions in academia/industry? I am myself currently looking for a postdoc, and I benefited from this. Many thanks! • I managed to socialise *a little bit*, which was better than other online conferences I attended, but still felt Q-Turn suffered from the difficulties inherent to online events when it came to socialising.could give some (very humble) suggestions, I think the nice efforts to force people to socialise that were undertaken by the wonderful organisers could have been pushed even further; one really hasbreak a thick layer of ice in online events. For instance, using gather town and forcing people to go there (for example by having the talks happen within the gather town space itself) could have forced people to really appropriate this space and start having these laid back conversations one has in real life, which are the real gist of any conference.

• I found the quality of the awareness sessions to be very uneven among the sessions I attended (I am of course not talking about the relevance of each subject, rather about the contributions and discussions in each session). To me, the "Science is not a safe space" session was really great, the "Black community in Academia" session was ok, and the "Ethics in Quantum research" session was not really helpful. I unfortunately couldn't attend the other sessions. It seems to me that the differences in quality were in connection with the number of contributors and the degree of engagement they had with one another and with the audience. However it was great overall to have these sessions. Thank you very much for organising them! • It was horrible! Whose idea was it to block out all participants in the Zoom sessions and to take questions via Slido? What sort of ridiculous setup was that? For a conference claiming to be all about inclusivity you shut out everybody except the speakers and panelists! I mean it wasn't even possible to see who else was attending the Zoom session (the participant list) let alone have the temerity to ask a question either on the Zoom chat or by unmuting yourself. I mean, good Lord, what were you afraid of? That somebody might ask an uncomfortable question or two? And then you talk of inclusivity and fairness? I've been to bigger and more prestigious online conferences which did not take such absurd measures. That one decision to shut out all participation in the Zoom sessions essentially turned the entire event into a pointless undertaking in my humble opinion. 

Educational and socioeconomic background of undergraduates and academic performance: consequences for affirmative action programs at a Brazilian research university. In proceeding of the conference on Institutional Management in Higher Education and Organisation for

Mental health in academia: An invisible crisis

Understanding mental health in the research environment: A Rapid Evidence Assessment

Appendix A.1. 3 

The Satisfaction survey was answered by 80 participants, in contrast to the 714 registered participants whose data we analysed in the previous section. As a remark, we estimate around 200 of registered participants to have actually attended the workshop in a meaningful way.Some general comments are the following: • The average satisfaction with the conference was around 92% positive.• The majority of people (both speakers and attendees) found the talks to be a good length. • Most attendees stuck to their own type of research but saw the value of both (theory/experimental). • The awareness sessions were very positively received, with a positive response of over 96% on average. • 95% of people would recommend Q-Turn • 98.5% of people felt Q-Turn was inclusive. The last comment in Sec. 5 is expressed by the one dissatisfied answer. • 73% of people thought the online platform created a more inclusive conference.• Only around half of attendees socialised/networked at the conference.• 96% of people plan to attend next Q-Turn.• 84% of people were satisfied with the online platforms used, and 88% said the conference information was clear and easy to follow.

Of the received answers, 53.4% were by men, 44.2% were by women, and 2.3% where by non-binary/trans participants. Hence the proportion of men that replied to the satisfaction survey was quite lower than the proportion of women and gender minority participants that did so.Appendix B.2.2. Career stage Figure 13 shows the proportion of participants (who answered the survey) in each career stage. We see that the proportion of Postdocs that replied to the satisfaction survey was much higher that for the other career stages.

Appendix C.1. Q-turn 2018Here is a representative selection of comments left by the Q-turn 2018 participants in the satisfaction survey.• It was a wonderfull meeting! Thanks organizors