Quantum is the next step toward the future of analytics and computing. Is your organization ready for it?

Quantum computing can solve challenges that modern computers can't--or it might take them a billion years to do so. It can crack any encryption and make your data completely safe. Google reports that it has seen a quantum computer that performed at least 100 million times faster than any classical computer in its lab.

Quantum blows away the processing of data and algorithms on conventional computers because of its ability to operate on electrical circuits that can be in more than one state at once. A quantum computer operates on Qubits (quantum bits) instead of on the standard bits that are used in conventional computing.

SEE: Managing AI and ML in the enterprise 2020: Tech leaders increase project development and implementation (TechRepublic Premium)

Quantum results can quickly make an impact on life science and pharmaceutical companies, for financial institutions evaluating portfolio risks, and for other organizations that want to expedite time-to-results for processing that on conventional computing platforms would take days to complete.

Few corporate CEOs are comfortable trying to explain to their boards what quantum computing is and why it is important to invest in it.

"There are three major areas where we see immediate corporate engagement with quantum computing," said Christopher Savoie, CEO and co-founder of Zapata Quantum Computing Software Company, a quantum computing solutions provider backed by Honeywell. "These areas are machine learning, optimization problems, and molecular simulation."

Savoie said quantum computing can bring better results in machine learning than conventional computing because of its speed. This rapid processing of data enables a machine learning application to consume large amounts of multi-dimensional data that can generate more sophisticated models of a particular problem or phenomenon under study.

SEE: Forget quantum supremacy: This quantum-computing milestone could be just as important (TechRepublic)

Quantum computing is also well suited for solving problems in optimization. "The mathematics of optimization in supply and distribution chains is highly complex," Savoie said. "You can optimize five nodes of a supply chain with conventional computing, but what about 15 nodes with over 85 million different routes? Add to this the optimization of work processes and people, and you have a very complex problem that can be overwhelming for a conventional computing approach."

A third application area is molecular simulation in chemistry and pharmaceuticals, which can be quite complex.

In each of these cases, models of circumstances, events, and problems can be rapidly developed and evaluated from a variety of dimensions that collate data from many diverse sources into a model.

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"The current COVID-19 crisis is a prime example," Savoie said. "Bill Gates knew in 2015 that handling such a pandemic would present enormous challengesbut until recently, we didn't have the models to understand the complexities of those challenges."

For those engaging in quantum computing and analytics today, the relative newness of the technology presents its own share of glitches. This makes it important to have quantum computing experts on board. For this reason, most early adopter companies elect to go to the cloud for their quantum computing, partnering with a vendor that has the specialized expertise needed to run and maintain quantum analytics.

SEE: Rural America is in the midst of a mental health crisis. Tech could help some patients see a way forward. (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

"These companies typically use a Kubernetes cluster and management stack on premises," Savoie said. "They code a quantum circuit that contains information on how operations are to be performed on quantum qubits. From there, the circuit and the prepared data are sent to the cloud, which performs the quantum operations on the data. The data is processed in the cloud and sent back to the on-prem stack, and the process repeats itself until processing is complete."

Savoie estimated that broad adoption of quantum computing for analytics will occur within a three- to five-year timeframe, with early innovators in sectors like oil and gas, and chemistry, that already understand the value of the technology and are adopting sooner.

"Whether or not you adopt quantum analytics now, you should minimally have it on your IT roadmap," Savoie said. "Quantum computing is a bit like the COVID-19 crisis. At first, there were only two deaths; then two weeks later, there were ten thousand. Quantum computing and analytics is a highly disruptive technology that can exponentially advance some companies over others."

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Quantum computing analytics: Put this on your IT roadmap - TechRepublic

Dario Gil from IBM Research

In this video, Dario Gil from IBM shares results from the IBM Quantum Challenge and describes how you can access and program quantum computers on the IBM Cloud today.

From May 4-8, we invited people from around the world to participate in the IBM Quantum Challengeon the IBM Cloud. We devised the Challenge as a global event to celebrateour fourth anniversary of having a real quantum computer on the cloud. Over those four days 1,745people from45countries came together to solve four problems ranging from introductory topics in quantum computing, to understanding how to mitigate noise in a real system, to learning about historic work inquantum cryptography, to seeing how close they could come to the best optimization result for a quantum circuit.

Those working in the Challenge joined all those who regularly make use of the 18quantum computing systems that IBM has on the cloud, includingthe 10 open systemsand the advanced machines available within theIBM Q Network. During the 96 hours of the Challenge, the total use of the 18 IBM Quantum systems on the IBM Cloud exceeded 1 billion circuits a day. Together, we made history every day the cloud users of the IBM Quantum systems made and then extended what can absolutely be called a world record in computing.

Every day we extend the science of quantum computing and advance engineering to build more powerful devices and systems. Weve put new two new systems on the cloud in the last month, and so our fleet of quantum systems on the cloud is getting bigger and better. Well be extending this cloud infrastructure later this year by installing quantum systems inGermanyand inJapan. Weve also gone more and more digital with our users with videos, online education, social media, Slack community discussions, and, of course, the Challenge.

Dr. Dario Gil is the Director of IBM Research, one of the worlds largest and most influential corporate research labs. IBM Research is a global organization with over 3,000 researchers at 12 laboratories on six continents advancing the future of computing. Dr. Gil leads innovation efforts at IBM, directing research strategies in Quantum, AI, Hybrid Cloud, Security, Industry Solutions, and Semiconductors and Systems. Dr. Gil is the 12th Director in its 74-year history. Prior to his current appointment, Dr. Gil served as Chief Operating Officer of IBM Research and the Vice President of AI and Quantum Computing, areas in which he continues to have broad responsibilities across IBM. Under his leadership, IBM was the first company in the world to build programmable quantum computers and make them universally available through the cloud. An advocate of collaborative research models, he co-chairs the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, a pioneering industrial-academic laboratory with a portfolio of more than 50 projects focused on advancing fundamental AI research to the broad benefit of industry and society.

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Video: The Future of Quantum Computing with IBM - insideHPC

LOS ALAMITOS, Calif.,May 14, 2020 Registration is now open for the inauguralIEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE20), a multidisciplinary event focusing on quantum technology, research, development, and training. QCE20, also known as IEEE Quantum Week, will deliver a series ofworld-class keynotes,workforce-building tutorials,community-building workshops, andtechnical paper presentations and postersonOctober 12-16inDenver, Colorado.

Were thrilled to open registration for the inaugural IEEE Quantum Week, founded by the IEEE Future Directions Initiative and supported by multiple IEEE Societies and organizational units, said Hausi Mller, QCE20 general chair and co-chair of the IEEE Quantum Initiative.Our initial goal is to address the current landscape of quantum technologies, identify challenges and opportunities, and engage the quantum community. With our current Quantum Week program, were well on track to deliver a first-rate quantum computing and engineering event.

QCE20skeynote speakersinclude the following quantum groundbreakers and leaders:

The week-longQCE20 tutorials programfeatures 15 tutorials by leading experts aimed squarely at workforce development and training considerations. The tutorials are ideally suited to develop quantum champions for industry, academia, and government and to build expertise for emerging quantum ecosystems.

Throughout the week, 19QCE20 workshopsprovide forums for group discussions on topics in quantum research, practice, education, and applications. The exciting workshops provide unique opportunities to share and discuss quantum computing and engineering ideas, research agendas, roadmaps, and applications.

The deadline for submittingtechnical papersto the eight technical paper tracks isMay 22. Papers accepted by QCE20 will be submitted to the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. The best papers will be invited to the journalsIEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering(TQE)andACM Transactions on Quantum Computing(TQC).

QCE20 provides attendees a unique opportunity to discuss challenges and opportunities with quantum researchers, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, developers, students, practitioners, educators, programmers, and newcomers. QCE20 is co-sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society, IEEE Communications Society, IEEE Council on Superconductivity,IEEE Electronics Packaging Society (EPS), IEEE Future Directions Quantum Initiative, IEEE Photonics Society, and IEEETechnology and Engineering Management Society (TEMS).

Registerto be a part of the highly anticipated inaugural IEEE Quantum Week 2020. Visitqce.quantum.ieee.orgfor event news and all program details, including sponsorship and exhibitor opportunities.

About the IEEE Computer Society

The IEEE Computer Society is the worlds home for computer science, engineering, and technology. A global leader in providing access to computer science research, analysis, and information, the IEEE Computer Society offers a comprehensive array of unmatched products, services, and opportunities for individuals at all stages of their professional career. Known as the premier organization that empowers the people who drive technology, the IEEE Computer Society offers international conferences, peer-reviewed publications, a unique digital library, and training programs. Visitwww.computer.orgfor more information.

About the IEEE Communications Society

TheIEEE Communications Societypromotes technological innovation and fosters creation and sharing of information among the global technical community. The Society provides services to members for their technical and professional advancement and forums for technical exchanges among professionals in academia, industry, and public institutions.

About the IEEE Council on Superconductivity

TheIEEE Council on Superconductivityand its activities and programs cover the science and technology of superconductors and their applications, including materials and their applications for electronics, magnetics, and power systems, where the superconductor properties are central to the application.

About the IEEE Electronics Packaging Society

TheIEEE Electronics Packaging Societyis the leading international forum for scientists and engineers engaged in the research, design, and development of revolutionary advances in microsystems packaging and manufacturing.

About the IEEE Future Directions Quantum Initiative

IEEE Quantumis an IEEE Future Directions initiative launched in 2019 that serves as IEEEs leading community for all projects and activities on quantum technologies. IEEE Quantum is supported by leadership and representation across IEEE Societies and OUs. The initiative addresses the current landscape of quantum technologies, identifies challenges and opportunities, leverages and collaborates with existing initiatives, and engages the quantum community at large.

About the IEEE Photonics Society

TheIEEE Photonics Societyforms the hub of a vibrant technical community of more than 100,000 professionals dedicated to transforming breakthroughs in quantum physics into the devices, systems, and products to revolutionize our daily lives. From ubiquitous and inexpensive global communications via fiber optics, to lasers for medical and other applications, to flat-screen displays, to photovoltaic devices for solar energy, to LEDs for energy-efficient illumination, there are myriad examples of the Societys impact on the world around us.

About the IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society

IEEE TEMSencompasses the management sciences and practices required for defining, implementing, and managing engineering and technology.

Source: IEEE Computer Society

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Registration Open for Inaugural IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering - HPCwire

Research team: (from left) Associate Professor Stefano Palomba, Dr Alessandro Tuniz, Professor Martijn de Sterke. Photo: Louise Cooper

Light is emerging as the leading vehicle for information processing in computers and telecommunications as our need for energy efficiency and bandwidth increases.

Already the gold standard for intercontinental communication through fibre-optics, photons are replacing electrons as the main carriers of information throughout optical networks and into the very heart of computers themselves.

However, there remain substantial engineering barriers to complete this transformation. Industry-standard silicon circuits that support light are more than an order of magnitude larger than modern electronic transistors. One solution is to compress light using metallic waveguides however this would not only require a new manufacturing infrastructure, but also the way light interacts with metals on chips means that photonic information is easily lost.

Now scientists in Australia and Germany have developed a modular method to design nanoscale devices to help overcome these problems, combining the best of traditional chip design with photonic architecture in a hybrid structure. Their research is published today in Nature Communications.

We have built a bridge between industry-standard silicon photonic systems and the metal-based waveguides that can be made 100 times smaller while retaining efficiency, said lead author Dr Alessandro Tuniz from the University of Sydney Nano Institute and School of Physics.

This hybrid approach allows the manipulation of light at the nanoscale, measured in billionths of a metre. The scientists have shown that they can achieve data manipulation at 100 times smaller than the wavelength of light carrying the information.

This sort of efficiency and miniaturisation will be essential in transforming computer processing to be based on light. It will also be very useful in the development of quantum-optical information systems, a promising platform for future quantum computers, said Associate Professor Stefano Palomba, a co-author from the University of Sydney and Nanophotonics Leader at Sydney Nano.

Eventually we expect photonic information will migrate to the CPU, the heart of any modern computer. Such a vision has already been mapped out by IBM.

On-chip nanometre-scale devices that use metals (known as plasmonic devices) allow for functionality that no conventional photonic device allows. Most notably, they efficiently compress light down to a few billionths of a metre and thus achieve hugely enhanced, interference-free, light-to-matter interactions.

As well as revolutionising general processing, this is very useful for specialised scientific processes such as nano-spectroscopy, atomic-scale sensing and nanoscale detectors, said Dr Tuniz also from the Sydney Institute of Photonics and Optical Science.

However, their universal functionality was hampered by a reliance on ad hoc designs.

We have shown that two separate designs can be joined together to enhance a run-of-the-mill chip that previously did nothing special, Dr Tuniz said.

This modular approach allows for rapid rotation of light polarisation in the chip and,becauseof that rotation, quickly permits nano-focusing down to about 100 times less than the wavelength.

Professor Martijn de Sterke is Director of the Institute of Photonics and Optical Science at the University of Sydney. He said: The future of information processing is likely to involve photons using metals that allow us to compress light to the nanoscale and integrate these designs into conventional silicon photonics.

This research was supported by the University of Sydney Fellowship Scheme, the German Research Foundation (DFG) under Germanys Excellence Strategy EXC-2123/1. This work was performed in part at the NSW node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF).

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Light, fantastic: the path ahead for faster, smaller computer processors - News - The University of Sydney

Quantum technology will revolutionise many industrial sectors, and will already begin spawning new, nationally significant business and research opportunities over the next few years. Advancements in quantum technology and, in particular, the technological leap afforded by quantum computers aka the quantum leap will enable unprecedented computing power and the ability to solve problems that are impossible for todays supercomputers.

Building this quantum computer will provide Finland with an exceptional level of capabilities in both research and technology, and will safeguard Finlands position at the forefront of new technology. The goal is to create a unique ecosystem for the development and application of quantum technology in Finland, in collaboration with companies and universities. VTT hopes to partner with progressive Finnish companies from a variety of sectors during the various phases of implementation and application.

The development and construction of Finlands quantum computer will be carried out as an innovation partnership that VTT will be opening up for international tender. The project will run for several years and its total cost is estimated at about EUR 2025 million.

The project will progress in stages. The first phase will last for about a year and aims to get a minimum five-qubit quantum computer in working order. However, the ultimate goal is a considerably more powerful machine with a larger number of qubits.

In the future, well encounter challenges that cannot be met using current methods. Quantum computing will play an important role in solving these kinds of problems. For example, the quantum computers of the future will be able to accurately model viruses and pharmaceuticals, or design new materials in a way that is impossible with traditional methods, says Antti Vasara, CEO of VTT.

Through this project, VTT is seeking to be a world leader in quantum technology and its application.

The pandemic has shocked not only Finlands economy but also the entire world economy, and it will take us some time to recover from the consequences. To safeguard economic recovery and future competitiveness, its now even more important than ever to make investments in innovation and future technologies that will create demand for Finnish companies products and services, says Vasara.

VTT has lengthy experience and top expertise in both quantum technology research and related fields of science and technology, such as superconductive circuits and cryogenics, microelectronics and photonics. In Otaniemi, VTT and Aalto University jointly run Micronova, a world-class research infrastructure that enables experimental research and development in quantum technologies. This infrastructure will be further developed to meet the requirements of quantum technologies. Micronovas cleanrooms are already equipped to manufacture components and products based on quantum technologies.

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VTT to acquire Finland's first quantum computer seeking to bolster Finland's and Europe's competitiveness - Quantaneo, the Quantum Computing Source

Businesses eager to embrace cutting-edge technology are exploring quantum computing, which depends on qubits to perform computations that would be much more difficult, or simply not feasible, on classical computers. The ultimate goals are quantum advantage, the inflection point when quantum computers begin to solve useful problems. While that is a long way off (if it can even be achieved), the potential is massive. Applications include everything from cryptography and optimization to machine learning and materials science.

As quantum computing startup IonQ has described it, quantum computing is a marathon, not a sprint. We had the pleasure of interviewing IonQ CEO Peter Chapman last month to discuss a variety of topics. Among other questions, we asked Chapman about quantum computings future impact on AI and ML.

The conversation quickly turned to Strong AI, or Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which does not yet exist. Strong AI is the idea that a machine could one day understand or learn any intellectual task that a human can.

AI in the Strong AI sense, that I have more of an opinion [about], just because I have more experience in that personally, Chapman told VentureBeat. And there was a really interesting paper that just recently came out talking about how to use a quantum computer to infer the meaning of words in NLP. And I do think that those kinds of things for Strong AI look quite promising. Its actually one of the reasons I joined IonQ. Its because I think that does have some sort of application.

In a follow-up email, Chapman expanded on his thoughts. For decades, it was believed that the brains computational capacity lay in the neuron as a minimal unit, he wrote. Early efforts by many tried to find a solution using artificial neurons linked together in artificial neural networks with very limited success. This approach was fueled by the thought that the brain is an electrical computer, similar to a classical computer.

However, since then, I believe we now know the brain is not an electrical computer, but an electrochemical one, he added. Sadly, todays computers do not have the processing power to be able to simulate the chemical interactions across discrete parts of the neuron, such as the dendrites, the axon, and the synapse. And even with Moores law, they wont next year or even after a million years.

Chapman then quoted Richard Feynman, who famously said Nature isnt classical, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, youd better make it quantum mechanical. And by golly, its a wonderful problem because it doesnt look so easy.

Similarly, its likely Strong AI isnt classical, its quantum mechanical as well, Chapman said.

One of IonQs competitors, D-Wave, argues that quantum computing and machine learning are extremely well matched. Chapman is still on the fence.

I havent spent enough time to really understand it, he admitted. There clearly [are] a lot of people who think that ML and quantum have an overlap. Certainly, if you think of 85% of all ML produces a decision tree, and the depth of that decision tree could easily be optimized with a quantum computer. Clearly, there [are] lots of people that think that generation of the decision tree could be optimized with a quantum computer. Honestly, I dont know if thats the case or not. I think its still a little early for machine learning, but there clearly [are] so many people that are working on it. Its hard to imagine it doesnt have [an] application.

Chapman continued in a later email: ML has intimate ties to optimization: Many learning problems are formulated as minimization of some loss function on a training set of examples. Generally, Universal Quantum Computers excel at these kinds of problems.

He listed three improvements in ML that quantum computing will likely allow:

Whether Strong AI or ML, IonQ isnt particularly interested in either. The company leaves that to its customers and future partners.

Theres so much to be to be done in a quantum, Chapman said. From education at one end all the way to the quantum computer itself. I think some of our competitors have taken on lots of the entire problem set. We at IonQ are just focused on producing the worlds best quantum computer for them. We think thats a large enough task for a little company like us to handle.

So, for the moment were kind of happy to let everyone else work on different problems, he added. We just dont have extra bandwidth or resources to put into working on machine learning algorithms. And luckily, there [are] lots of other companies that think that there [are] applications there. Well partner with them in the sense that well provide the hardware that their algorithms will run on. But were not in the ML business, per se.

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IonQ CEO Peter Chapman on how quantum computing will change the future of AI - VentureBeat

May 11, 2020 David Graves, an internationally-known chemical engineer, has been named to lead a new research enterprise that will explore plasma applications in nanotechnology for everything from semiconductor manufacturing to the next generation of super-fast quantum computers.

Graves, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, since 1986, is an expert in plasma applications in semiconductor manufacturing. He will become the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratorys (PPPL) first associate laboratory director for Low-Temperature Plasma Surface Interactions, effective June 1. He will likely begin his new position from his home in Lafayette, California, in the East Bay region of San Francisco.

He will lead a collaborative research effort to not only understand and measure how plasma is used in the manufacture of computer chips, but also to explore how plasma could be used to help fabricate powerful quantum computing devices over the next decade.

This is the apex of our thrust into becoming a multipurpose lab, said Steve Cowley, PPPL director, who recruited Graves. Working with Princeton University, and with industry and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), we are going to make a big push to do research that will help us understand how you can manufacture at the scale of a nanometer. A nanometer, one-billionth of a meter, is about ten thousand times less than the width of a human hair.

The new initiative will draw on PPPLs expertise in low temperature plasmas, diagnostics, and modeling. At the same time, it will work closely with plasma semiconductor equipment industries and will collaborate with Princeton University experts in various departments, including chemical and biological engineering, electrical engineering, materials science, and physics. In particular, collaborations with PRISM (the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials) are planned, Cowley said. I want to see us more tightly bound to the University in some areas because that way we get cross-fertilization, he said.

Graves will also have an appointment as professor in the Princeton University Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, starting July 1. He is retiring from his position at Berkeley at the end of this semester. He is currently writing a book (Plasma Biology) on plasma applications in biology and medicine. He said he changed his retirement plans to take the position at PPPL and Princeton University. This seemed like a great opportunity, Graves said. Theres a lot we can do at a national laboratory where theres bigger scale, world-class colleagues, powerful computers and other world-class facilities.

Exciting new direction for the Lab

Graves is already working with Jon Menard, PPPL deputy director for research, on the strategic plan for the new research initiative over the next five years. Its a really exciting new direction for the Lab that will build upon our unique expertise in diagnosing and simulating low-temperature plasmas, Menard said. It also brings us much closer to the university and industry, which is great for everyone.

The staff will grow over the next five years and PPPL is recruiting for an expert in nano-fabrication and quantum devices. The first planned research would use converted PPPL laboratory space fitted with equipment provided by industry. Subsequent work would use laboratory space at PRISM on Princeton Universitys campus. In the longer term, researchers in the growing group would have brand new laboratory and office space as a central part the Princeton Plasma Innovation Center (PPIC), a new building planned at PPPL.

Physicists Yevgeny Raitses, principal investigator for the Princeton Collaborative Low Temperature Plasma Research Facility (PCRF) and head of the Laboratory for Plasma Nanosynthesis, and Igor Kavanovich, co-principal investigator of PCRF, are both internationally-known experts in low temperature plasmas who have forged recent partnerships between PPPL and various industry partners. The new initiative builds on their work, Cowley said.

A priority research area

Research aimed at developing quantum information science (QIS) is a priority for the DOE. Quantum computers could be very powerful in solving complex scientific problems, including simulating quantum behavior in material or chemical systems. QIS could also have applications in quantum communication, especially in encryption, and quantum sensing. It could potentially have an impact in areas such as national security. A key question is whether plasma-based fabrication tools commonly used today will play a role in fabricating quantum devices in the future, Menard said. There are huge implications in that area, Menard said. We want to be part of that.

Graves is an expert on applying molecular dynamics simulations to low temperature plasma-surface interactions. These simulations are used to understand how plasma-generated ions, atoms and molecules interact with various surfaces. He has extensive research experience in academia and industry in plasma-related semiconductor manufacturing. That expertise will be useful for understanding how to make very fine structures and circuits at the nanometer, sub-nanometer and even atom-by-atom level, Menard said. Davids going to bring a lot of modeling and fundamental understanding to that process. That, paired with our expertise and measurement capabilities, should make us unique in the U.S. in terms of what we can do in this area.

Graves was born in Daytona Beach, Florida, and moved a lot as a child because his father was in the U.S. Air Force. He lived in Homestead, Florida; near Kansas City, Missouri; and in North Bay Ontario; and finished high school near Phoenix, Arizona.

Graves received bachelors and masters degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Arizona and went on to pursue a doctoral degree in the subject, graduating with a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1986. He is a fellow of the Institute of Physics and the American Vacuum Society. He is the author or co-author of more than 280 peer-reviewed publications. During his long career at Berkeley, he has supervised 30 Ph.D. students and 26 post-doctoral students, many of whom are now in leadership positions in industry and academia.

A leader since the 1990s

Graves has been a leader in the use of plasma in the semiconductor industry since the 1990s. In 1996, he co-chaired a National Research Council (NRC) workshop and co-edited the NRCs Database Needs for Modeling and Simulation of Plasma Processing. In 2008, he performed a similar role for a DOE workshop on low-temperature plasmas applications resulting in the report Low Temperature Plasma Science Challenges for the Next Decade.

Graves is an admitted Francophile who speaks (near) fluent French and has spent long stretches of time in France as a researcher. He was named Matre de Recherche (master of research) at the cole Polytechnic in Palaiseau, France, in 2006. He was an invited researcher at the University of Perpignan in 2010 and received a chaire dexcellence from the Nanoscience Foundation in Grenoble, France, to study plasma-graphene interactions.

He has received numerous honors during his career. He was appointed the first Lam Research Distinguished Chair in Semiconductor Processing at Berkeley for 2011-2016. More recently, he received the Will Allis Prize in Ionized Gas from the American Physical Society in 2014 and the 2017 Nishizawa Award, associated with the Dry Process Symposium in Japan. In 2019, he was appointed foreign expert at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China. He served as the first senior editor of IEEE Transactions on Radiation and Plasma Medical Science.

Graves has been married for 35 years to Sue Graves, who recently retired from the City of Lafayette, where she worked in the school bus program. The couple has three adult children. Graves enjoys bicycling and yoga and the couple loves to travel. They also enjoy hiking, visiting museums, listening to jazz music, and going to the theater.

About PPPL

PPPL, on Princeton Universitys Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro, N.J., is devoted to creating new knowledge about the physics of plasmas ultra-hot, charged gases and to developing practical solutions for the creation of fusion energy. The Laboratory is managed by the University for the U.S. Department of Energys Office of Science, which is the largest single supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visitscience.energy.gov(link is external).

Source: Jeanne Jackson DeVoe, PPPL

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David Graves to Head New Research at PPPL for Plasma Applications in Industry and Quantum Information Science - HPCwire

We have all seen movies or read books about an apocalyptic world where humankind is fighting against a deadly pathogen, and researchers are in a race against time to find a cure for the same. But COVID-19 is not a fictional chapter, it is real, and scientists all over the world are frantically looking for patterns in data by employing powerful supercomputers with the hopes of finding a speedier breakthrough in vaccine discovery for the COVID-19.

A team of researchers from Penn State University has recently unearthed a solution that has the potential to expedite the process of discovering a novel coronavirus treatment that is by employing an innovative hybrid branch of research known as quantum machine learning. Quantum Machine Learning is the latest field that combines both machine learning and quantum physics. The team is led by Swaroop Ghosh, Joseph R., and Janice M. Monkowski Career Development Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Engineering.

In cases where a computer science-driven approach is implemented to identify a cure, most methodologies leverage machine learning to focus on screening different compounds one at a time to see if they can find a bond with the virus main protease, or protein. And the quantum machine learning method could yield quicker results and is more economical than any current methods used for drug discovery.

According to Prof. Ghosh, discovering any new drug that can cure a disease is like finding a needle in a haystack. Further, it is an incredibly expensive, laborious, and time-consuming solution. Using the current conventional pipeline for discovering new drugs can take between five and ten years from the concept stage to being released to the market and could cost billions in the process.

He further adds, High-performance computing such as supercomputers and artificial intelligence canhelp accelerate this process by screeningbillions of chemical compounds quicklyto findrelevant drugcandidates.

This approach works when enough chemical compounds are available in the pipeline, but unfortunately, this is not true for COVID-19. This project will explorequantum machine learning to unlock new capabilities in drug discovery by generating complex compounds quickly, he explains.

The funding from the Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences, coordinated through the Penn State Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences as part of their rapid-response seed funding for research across the University to address COVID-19, is supporting this work.

Ghosh and his electrical engineering doctoral students Mahabubul Alam and Abdullah Ash Saki and computer science and engineering postgraduate students Junde Li and Ling Qiu have earlier worked on developing a toolset for solving particular types of problems known as combinatorial optimization problems, using quantum computing. Drug discovery too comes under a similar category. And hence their experience in this sector has made it possible for the researchers to explore in the search for a COVID-19 treatment while using the same toolset that they had already developed.

Ghosh considers the usage of Artificial intelligence fordrug discovery to be a very new area. The biggest challenge is finding an unknown solution to the problem by using technologies thatare still evolving that is, quantum computing and quantum machine learning.Weare excited about the prospects of quantum computing in addressinga current critical issue and contributing our bit in resolving this grave challenge. he elaborates.

Based on a report by McKinsey & Partner, the field of quantum computing technology is expected to have a global market value of US$1 trillion by 2035. This exciting scope of quantum machine learning can further boost the economic value while helping the healthcare industry in defeating the COVID-19.

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Recent Research Answers the Future of Quantum Machine Learning on COVID-19 - Analytics Insight

The BBVA Foundation awarded three MIT professors Frontiers of Knowledge Awards for their work in climate change, biology and biomedicine, and quantum computation. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences Professor Kerry A. Emanuel, Department of Biology Professor David Sabatini, and Department of Mathematics Professor Peter Shor were recognized in the 12th edition of this annual award.

Kerry Emanuel

Emanuel, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Atmospheric Science, earned the BBVAs Climate Change award for his fundamental contributions to the understanding of tropical cyclones and how they are affected by climate change, according to the committees citation. By understanding the essential physics of atmospheric convection he has unraveled the behavior of tropical cyclones hurricanes and typhoons as our climate changes. He was also lauded for extraordinary effectiveness in communicating the science of climate change to the public and policymakers.

Emanuel is the co-founder (with Daniel H. Rothman) and co-director of the MIT Lorenz Center, a climate think tank that fosters creative approaches to learning how climate works. He was the first to link greater hurricane intensity to climate change-induced warming of sea surface waters.

It is hard to imagine an area of climate science where one persons leadership is so incontestable, says Bjorn Stevens, BBVA Foundation committee chairman and director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology.

Hurricanes have long been known as destructive natural events, but the underlying physics of them was still largely unknown. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, after completing degrees at MIT and later joining the EAPS faculty, Emanuel pinned down the mechanisms behind hurricanes. In his research detailing how warming surface oceans fuel storms and increase the intensity, he called them massive, natural machines that convert the heat they extract from the ocean into wind energy.

A changing climate will see more powerful hurricanes. Emanuel warns that this will complicate the already-tough task of making accurate forecasts, and predicts that hurricanes will spread into more regions of the planet.

His models currently predict a 5 percent increase in hurricane intensity (i.e., wind speed) for each 1-degree rise in ocean temperatures. Three degrees of warming would makehurricanes 15 percent more intense, but their destructive potential would actually triple; in other words, with this15percent increasein wind speed, thedamage would increase by around 45 percent, says Emanuel, the author of "Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes" (Oxford Unviersity Press, 2005) and "What We Know about Climate Change" (MIT Press, 2018).

Todays most intense hurricanes may have a wind speed at the surface of 85 meters per second, but by the end of this century, unless we curb greenhouse gas emissions, we could start to see speeds of up to 90-92 meters per second. A hurricanes destructive potential is determined by its wind speed, so in fact, the destructiveness of these storms for human populations would be considerably greater.

Emanuel says that the international community is not doing nearly enough to combat climate change. We need to stop listening to the voices of denial, and instead listen to our own children, who are crying out for us to act.

David Sabatini

Sabatini, an MIT professor of biology and member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, shares his Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Biomedicine with Michael Hall of the University of Basel, for the discovery of a protein kinase that regulates cellular metabolism and growth.

Their discovery of mTOR is used in the study of a wide array of health conditions, including obesity, aging, cancer, diabetes, epilepsy, Alzheimers, and Parkinsons. Research has suggested that 60 percent of cancers have some mechanism for turning on the mTOR pathway, Sabatini says. I could never have imagined the implications of that first discovery.

Sabatini began his PhD thesis on understanding the mechanism of action of rapamycin, a natural anti-fungal agent proved to have immunosuppressive and anti-cancer properties. It is used to prevent organ rejection in transplant patients.

The two scientists arrived at their findings independently. Hall discovered the target of rapamycin (TOR) protein in yeast cells in 1993 during his time as a senior investigator; Sabatini isolated it in mammals while still a doctoral student, in 1994, and gave it the name mTOR.

In mammalian cells, mTOR which stands for mechanistic target of rapamycin, an immunosuppressant drug that inhibits cell growth is the keystone molecule in a pathway that regulates cellular metabolic processes in response to nutrients.

Sabatini explains that mTOR is a switch that turns on in the presence of nutrients, so the body can build material, and when there are no nutrients available it breaks the material down. The on/off switch of the mTOR switch controls a cascade of hundreds of molecular signals, many of which are still unknown to science.

The molecular mechanisms that regulate the growth of organisms and coordinate it with the availability of nutrients were unknown until two decades ago, said the committee.

After the molecule was isolated in yeast and mammals, both researchers began the task of unraveling its multiple organismal functions. Sabatinis lab has since identified most of the components of the mTOR pathway and shown how they contribute to the function of cells and organisms. His discoveries have opened avenues for identifying disease vulnerabilities and treatment targets for diverse conditions notably including key metabolic vulnerabilities in pancreatic and ovarian cancer cells and neurodevelopmental defects. He is currently working to exploit those vulnerabilities as targets for new therapies.

Rapamycin is used as an immunosuppressant to prevent rejection of transplanted organs and as an anti-cancer agent. In the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, it is used as a coating for coronary stents to stop new blockages forming in the bloodstream.

Because mTOR is a nutrient sensor, additional research points to caloric restriction for increasing longevity. TOR was the first known protein that influences longevity in all of the four species that scientists commonly use to study aging: yeast, worms, flies, and mice. We are just scratching the surface of possible mTOR applications, he says. I dont know if it will help us live to be 120, but I think it will have beneficial effects on different physiological systems, and I am practically sure that it will ameliorate aspects of aging-related diseases.

Peter Shor

Shor, the Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics, was recognized in the Basic Sciences category for his role in the development of quantum computation and cryptology. He shares this award with IBM Researchs chemical physicist Charles H. Bennett and University of Montreal computer scientist Gilles Brassard.

The award committeeremarked on the leap forward in quantum technologies, an advance that draws heavily on the new laureates pioneering contributions. The committee stated that their work spans multiple disciplines and brings together concepts from mathematics, physics, and computer science. Their ideas are playing a key role in the development of quantum technologies for communication and computation.

Bennett and Brassard invented quantum cryptography in the 1980s to ensure the physical inviolability of data communications. The importance of this work became apparent 10 years later when Shor discovered that a hypothetical quantum computer would render effectively useless the conventional cryptography systems underpinning the privacy and security of todays internet communications.

Bennett and Brassards BB84 protocol generally acknowledged as the first practical application of the science of quantum information underpins the security of all our internet communications and transactions, and is based on the existence of mathematical problems that computers cannot solve. Until, as the citation states, Shor discovered that quantum computers could factorize integers much faster than any supercomputer, therefore compromising the security of conventional cryptographic schemes.

Says Brassard, The importance of our work became much more evident after Shor destroyed everything else. Shors Algorithm is now one of the quantum algorithms that comprise the fast-developing language to be spoken by tomorrows quantum computers.

Another of Shors contributions is an algorithm used to correct quantum computer errors, an essential requirement for enabling and scaling quantum computations, the committee wrote.

Quantum computers are exposed to a large volume of noise, causing numerous errors. Everyone thought that you couldnt correct errors on quantum computers, recalls Shor, because as soon as you try to measure a quantum system you disturb it. In other words, if you try to measure the error so as to correct it, you disturb it and computation is interrupted. My algorithm showed that you can isolate and fix the error and still preserve the computation.

Quantum cryptography is one of the most advanced branches of quantum technology, which the laureates view as a long-term prospect. It will be five or 10 years before a quantum computer can do anything approaching useful, says Shor. With time, however, he is convinced that these machines will deliver revolutionary applications. For example, in biomedicine, it takes enormous amounts of computer time to simulate the behavior of molecules, he says. But quantum computers could achieve that, and help design new drugs.

The BBVA Foundation promotes knowledge based on research and artistic and cultural creation, and supports activity on the analysis of emerging issues in five strategic areas: environment, biomedicine and health, economy and society, basic sciences and technology, and culture. The Frontiers of Knowledge Awards, spanning eight prize categories, recognize research and creative work of excellence as embedded in theoretical advances, technological developments, or innovative artistic works and styles, as well as fundamental contributions in addressing key challenges of the 21st century.

Since its launch in 2009, the BBVA also has given awards to MITs Susan Solomon for climate change; Marvin Minsky, Adi Shamir,Silvio Micali,Shafi Goldwasser, and Ronald Rivest for information and computer technologies; Stephen Buchwald for basic sciences; Edward Boyden for biology and biomedicine; and Daron Acemoglu for economics.

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Kerry Emanuel, David Sabatini, and Peter Shor receive BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge awards - MIT News

Sonoya Mizuno as Lily in FXs Devs. (Photo by Miya Mizuno / FX)

The premise of the miniseries Devs is straightforward: Amaya, a company that specializes in quantum computing, invents a top secret prediction algorithm, kills an employee in an effort to protect that invention, and makes an enemy of the victims lover and coworker. The first episode features a gilded computer fortress, espionage, a murder, and a staged suicide, pulpy elements suggesting popcorn thrills and cyberpunk frenzy. The reality is much stranger: Devs is really about deities and the theologies we embrace to appease them.

Devs is writer and director Alex Garlands second tale of Silicon Valley delusions. His directorial debut, 2014s Ex Machina, explored the development of a gendered AI being, Ava, whose sentience is tested by her creator, Nathan, and Caleb, his unwitting employee, who believes he has won a special contest. The film takes place far outside Silicon Valley, at a remote compound owned by Nathan, who is the CEO of a search engine company, but its defined by the tech industrys promethean ambitions. As Nathan and Caleb speak casually of creating and assessing life, they come across as intelligent but self-important, a dynamic that Ava uses to plot her escape.

Devs takes place in the Valley itself. It opens with a foreboding profile of Amaya CEO Forest (Nick Offerman), whos introduced alone in darkness, followed by a montage of San Franciscos glittering landmarks and jarring snapshots of the citys horrific income disparity. Those poles merge when Amaya employees Lily (Sonoya Mizuno) and Sergeis (Karl Glusman) commute to work: Before the couple can exit their apartment building, they must step past a homeless man who sleeps on their stoop.

But then, as the Amaya-branded charter bus that transports them glides out of the city and into the surrounding redwoods, Garlands portrayal of the Valley shifts again, from the sociological to the occult. Ensconced in the verdant Bay Area hills like the lair of a Bond villain, the Amaya campus is scenic and glamorousexcept for a gargantuan bust of a little girl that towers over the buildings and trees, her hands raised as if shes praying or dancing. The strangeness intensifies when Sergei is promoted to work in Devs, the software development arm of Amaya that focuses on the companys clandestine predictive algorithm (also named Devs). The team is housed in a facility located in a clearing thats deeper in the woods than the main campus. The path through the trees is lined with glowing lights that form halos around the redwood trunks, and the entrance is lined with iridescent obelisks that sparkle in the California sun. As Sergei enters this sanctum and rides a levitating platform to his workstation, Amaya acquires an increasingly magical hue. This is the heart of Devs: science, the surreal, and the thin line between them.

The show is Garlands first foray into television, but its continuous with his previous work as a screenwriter and director. Its closest analog in his filmography, which spans works like the zombie film 28 Days Later (2002) and the dystopian police thriller Dredd (2012), is 2018s Annihilation. Like that hallucinogenic adaptation of Jeff VanderMeers sci-fi book, Devs starts with the familiar and moves deep into the uncanny. The show is variously a drama, a thriller, and horror, constantly molting its skin. Garland seems to favor genre because he can set up traditional narrative structures and fill them with trapdoorsbeckoning viewers in, then flipping a switch.

The first misdirection is the main character. Though Sergei is the focus of the initial episode, hes killed by its end, and the circumstances of his death prompt Lily to question Amayas quaint veneer. A member of the companys encryption department, Lily is questioning and cunning. She speaks and moves slowly, dwelling on her words and constantly frowning. When Amaya covers up Sergeis death as a self-immolation and even furnishes a convincing video of the suicide, Lily is suspicious, a skepticism that structures the show. For every obstacle Amaya throws in her path, she responds with a unique solution, inciting a game of cat and mouse that involves cons, hacking, and escape from a mental ward.

Shes well-suited to a story critical of the tech industry: brainy yet ordinary, crafty but fallible, frightened but not paranoid. Compared to brooding sci-fi heroes like Elliot Alderson of Mr. Robot, who is a savant hacker and exclusively wears black hoodies, or John Anderton of Minority Report, who is a master detective and escape artist, Lily isnt a virtuoso. Her defining trait is her detachment from the myths and illusions of Silicon Valley, a disposition that grounds her decisions as shes drawn deeper into Amayas designs. Through Lily, the show highlights the lives beyond the technocracy, even at the epicenter of its innovations.

Devs follows a decade filled with critical looks at the tech industry. From the roasting of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network to Anna Wieners memoir Uncanny Valley to Boots Rileys fuming send-up of Silicon Valley callousness in Sorry to Bother You, tech culture has become a standard milieu for parsing modern anxieties about corporate power, personal privacy, and social inequality. Devs channels these tensions, but tweaks their vernacular. While the show can be watched as a David and Goliath tale, in which an aggrieved woman goes to war with an egomaniacal man and the ruthless capitalist machine at his disposal, Garland is largely disinterested in allegory. For him, politics and philosophy are embedded in science and technology itself. Accordingly, the conflicts of the series flow from the quantum mechanics at the heart of the story.

In particular, Garland traces the consequences of a religious embrace of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. In that version of quantum theory, all possible iterations of an event can and do happen, and our experience of an event is just one branch on an infinitely expanding tree. This interpretation posits that all events are reducible to their underlying physicsmeaning they are deterministicand Forest and his chief programmer, Katie (Alison Pill), test that theory by using the Devs algorithm to recreate and then observe the past with pristine clarity, eventually peering into the future as well.

The self-fulfilling nature of viewing choice as an illusion, and then later confirming it, imbues Forest and Katie with an inhuman dispassion. Forest, aloof and disinterested, powerful yet not paranoid, is a far cry from the standard tech overlord. He lives in a modest house without a fence or gates and wears dinky plaid shirts and jeans, scanning as down-to-earth. Katie, who is introduced at his side, has zero tolerance for error and ineptitude, yet shes intensely serene. She channels Silicon Valley intelligence without the performative machismo or affected awkwardness; she wants to be right, not worshipped. Together the pair practice a cold form of nonintervention, declining to interfere as the events of the series beget car accidents, kidnappings, and torture. Fate (on the quantum level) is their religion and their piety is steadfast. For a higher cause, they relinquish their free will. Garland plays with narrative forms through Lilys pluck and suspicion, giving the series a peculiar, contradictory rhythm. In one scene, Lily and Jamie (Lin Ha), a heartbroken and downcast ex-boyfriend shes enlisted to help her investigate Sergeis death, are arranged around their old apartment at different points in time. They sit apart, enter and exit separately, and brood. Simultaneously, Lily and Sergei are positioned around the same space: They hug, kiss, and cuddle. Jamie insists he was smitten with Lily and blindsided by their breakup, but in this moment we see the distance between them.

In another scene with the same visual conceit, Katie views different versions of the car accident that killed Forests wife and daughter, who the company is named after. The collisions play out simultaneously, showing multiple versions of Forest running to the scene of the accident as the cars swerve or impact in different ways, like some video game glitch. Only one scenario is fatal, however, highlighting how perfectly the accident played out. These time collages are a preview of the Devs system that gets honed later in the series, and they convey Garlands unique relationship to science. As uncanny as it is to view the past in high-definition and as scary as it is for Amaya to possess such technology, its also impressive. Garland isnt an apologist for Amayas abuses, but he doesnt downplay the wonder of the companys achievements.

That cautious reverence pays off in the form of the predictive algorithm system actually working. After starts and stops, toward the end of the series it becomes fully functional, granting Amaya the ability to view history exactly as it happened by applying determinism to GPS coordinates and setting the clock. The result is the ultimate archive of earths history and an unparalleled spying device. Housed in a cozy, theater-like room inside of the Devs HQ, the device works like an immersive scrying mirror, conveying the spookiness at the heart of cutting-edge science. What if were magicians? Forest asks Katie, his voice quaking with fear.

This outcome is striking because a longstanding trope in sci-fi is that devices or processes with flawed inventors are themselves flawed. This is the premise of most fictional forms of artificial intelligence, from Sonny in I, Robot to The Avengers Ultron. (And it is nearly always the premise of stories involving genetic engineering, as seen in Jurassic Park, Frankenstein, and The Fly.) In a sly nod to tech leaders often coming from sales or venture capital backgrounds,, Forest plays no role in the Devs system getting up and running (Hes not a genius, hes an entrepreneur, one character quips). More than a joke, this choice allows the narrative to pivot away from his neurosis as a grieving father and husband and consider the broader implications of Devs. As Devs programmers celebrate the tool and test it, an anxiety sets in. They have become gods and the power is horrifying. Determinism robs them of liberty and humanity.

In a masterstroke of plotting and irony, that breakthrough leads back to Lily, the rogue nonbeliever. When Katie and Forest use the algorithm to view the future, they find that they cannot see past a moment when Lily strolls into Devs, beginning a countdown to learn the fate of the company and the device itself. When that encounter inevitably happens, whats dazzling is that Lily does not arrive as an avenging angel. Rather, she acts as a sort of quantum trickster, at once foiling Amayas schemes and enabling them, challenging the companys mad science and proving it.

A key moment in the finale is Forest informing Lily that the v in Devs is roman, making Devs Deus, or deity in Latin. Forest introduces this trivia as an inside joke, accenting how removed he is from the consequences of his ambitions. In his pursuit to reconnect with his daughter and wife at any cost, he turns the world into his instrument. In his view, everything Lily has endured is collateral damage. For Lily, the disclosure validates her resistance. If a deity is as constraining and controlling as Forest, it must be defied.

Corresponding to its themes, the series ends ambiguously. Theres no divine punishment for Katie and Forests tinkering, no reward for Lilys courage. The Devs system does not explode or short-circuit or get unplugged. The government does not storm in with guns and hackers to save the day. Instead, the show concludes with Lily and Forest becoming quantum data, allowing them to repeatedly live out multiple versions of their lives. In the timeline we see, which is one among infinite possibilities, Forest is reunited with his daughter and wife and Lily reconciles with Jamie. Its tragic and touching and fleetinga very quantum ending.

This sort of finale elides the aftermath of a world containing a godlike algorithm and settles instead on something more conventional: twin portraits of grief. But the value of the more narrow conclusion is it posits that, like consumers, techs engineers and their loved ones are also exploited by the relentless drive for innovation. In Ex Machina, Garland packed this sentiment into an allusion to the quote Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds, the line from the Bhagavad Gita that Robert Oppenheimer uttered after witnessing the detonation of a nuclear weapon. In Devs, the technology and the destruction are different, but in the shows panorama of losses personal, global, and ontological, worlds feels pointedly more plural.

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Between God and Science in the Surreal Silicon Valley of Devs - The Nation