Entangled Things

In Episode 41, Patrick and Ciprian speak with returning guest Fred Chong of the University of Chicago.

Among other topics, the team discuss the acquisition of Super.tech by ColdQuanta, the benefits of software development companies working directly with hardware manufacturers, and neutral atom architecture.

Fred Chong is the Seymour Goodman Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago and the Chief Scientist at Super.tech.  His work focuses on accelerating the timeline for practical quantum computing by developing software techniques that optimize for the physical properties of quantum hardware.  He leads the EPiQC Project (Enabling Practical-scale Quantum Computing), a $10M flagship national research project funded by the National Science Foundation's Expeditions in Computing program.  Chong received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1996 and is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the Intel Outstanding Researcher Award, and 10 best paper awards. 

In Episode 40, Patrick and Ciprian speak with Rob Freeman, language and Artificial Intelligence enthusiast.

The team discuss linguistics, machine learning, and defining grammar across all languages from first principals.

Rob Freeman is from New Zealand where he studied physics. But a passion to understand thought, in the first place as personally experienced by speaking diverse languages,  led him to spend most of the last 30 years in Asia. There he combined his background in physics with his passion to understand thought by working on machine translation in Japan, and the computational analysis of grammar in Hong Kong. 

For most of the last 20 years he has been pushing a somewhat different quantum inspired perspective on machine learning, emphasizing aspects of complexity theory, even chaos. Which, quantum included, he sees as potentially being manifestations of properties of distributed representations. And that as a consequence of this, the immediate solution to continuing puzzles of AI may be as simple as turning the "learning" problem upside down. So that, instead of thinking of AI as a process of compressing or "learning" structure, we think of it as being an expansion or generation of structure, which it turns out is more powerful and entangled than we suspected. 

He believes this offers the key to understanding firstly perception, but also the big questions: creativity, freewill, consciousness. And even suggests a quantum like character and solution for contemporary political fragmentation and social conflict!

In Episode 39, Patrick and Ciprian speak with Bob Liscouski, CEO, and Bill McGann, CTO and COO of Quantum Computing Inc.

The team discuss, the different approaches to QPUs, optimization, predictive analytics, plus a special announcement at the end of the episode.

Robert Liscouski  has served as president, CEO, and chairman of QCI since February 2018, bringing to the company more than 35 years of executive experience at public and private companies, and federal agencies. He has extensive experience developing critical programs for protecting national security interests and essential infrastructure, as well as in crisis management, organizational development, and strategic planning.
 
 Robert’s public sector experience includes time in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of State, the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office, and served on the Intelligence ScienceBoard supporting the CIA and NIA. On the private sector side, Robert held roles at Implant Sciences, Coca-Cola Company, and Orion Scientific Systems.
 
 Robert currently serves on the board of technical advisors for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the board of the National Child Protection Task Force.
 
 He received his Bachelor of Science from John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Master of Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

William J. McGann Ph.D.  is the Chief Operating and Technology Officer (COO/CTO) for QCI, responsible for technical and product engineering. Prior to joining QCI's executive team, Bill served as a member of the Board of Directors for the company.
 
 Prior to joining QCI, Bill served as the Chief Technology Officer for the Security, Detection and Automation business at Leidos Corporation. Central to his role was the creation of innovative customer solutions driven by a strong portfolio of Physics, Chemistry and Software-based products. Bill has a strong, directed passion for transforming credible science into practical technology solutions in solving some of the world’s greatest challenges.
 
 Prior to joining Leidos, Bill held numerous business and technology leadership positions and roles including; (a) Founder of the first explosives trace detection company, Ion Track Instruments, (b) Chief Technology Officer for GE Security, (c) VP of Engineering for United Technologies Fire and Security business, (d) CEO (and board member) of Implant Sciences Corp. and (e) Chief Technology Officer at L3Harris Aviation Security and Detection business.
 
 Bill holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from University of Connecticut and Undergraduate degrees in Chemistry and Biology.

In Episode 38, Patrick and Ciprian speak with Mariia Mykhailova, Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft.

The team discuss, Q#, perceived barriers, how to get started in Quantum Computing, and what kinds of problems could be solved with Quantum Computing in the future.

Mariia Mykhailova is a principal software engineer at Azure Quantum, focusing on education and developer outreach. Mariia is the author and maintainer of the Quantum Katas project – an open-source collection of hands-on tutorials and exercises for learning quantum computing using Microsoft Quantum Development Kit, a part-time lecturer at Northeastern University, teaching an “Introduction to Quantum Computing” course, and the author of the O’Reilly book “Q# Pocket Guide”.

In Episode 37, Patrick and Ciprian speak with Dr. Olivia Lanes, North American lead for Quiskit and Education at IBM.

Among other topics, the team discuss hardware aware programming, computational advantage, and approaching education for Quantum.

Dr. Olivia Lanes completed her PhD in physics, focused on quantum measurement, in 2020 from the University of Pittsburgh. She joined IBM shortly after, where she works as the North American Lead for Qiskit Research/Education. In this capacity, she works to help put Qiskit into the hands of researchers and to make sure the people who are using our systems have access to the best tools and devices. 

She is also passionate about education, and works on IBM Quantum's challenges and summer schools with the aim of democratizing quantum education. She also sits on the national  Q-12 education council to focus on workforce development at a national level. 

In Episode 36, Patrick speaks with Dr. Lewis Johnson, Chief Scientific Officer of NLM Photonics.

Among other topics, the team discuss photonics, electro-optic conversion, computational chemistry, and the Quantum Internet.

Dr. Lewis E. Johnson has 15 years of experience in nanotechnology, computational chemistry, and materials design, and he is passionate about making a better future. He is currently the Chief Scientific Officer at NLM Photonics, a pioneering photonics company developing computing and networking solutions and devices, based in Seattle and Paris. 

 Dr. Johnson has published over 30 scientific papers, secured two patents (with others pending), and given numerous conference presentations. He’s the co-author of the non-fiction book Understanding Nanomaterials Second Editon with Dr. Malkiat S. Johal. 

In addition to NLM, Dr. Johnson is a Research Scientist at the University of Washington (UW) Department of Chemistry. He has extensive experience transferring academic research in technology into the private sector. Dr. Johnson has done postdoctoral research at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and taught and conducted postdoctoral research at Pomona College. He has a dual Ph.D. in Chemistry and Nanotechnology from UW. Dr. Johnson lives in Seattle with his cat Daisy. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

In Episode 35, Patrick and Ciprian explore Bell's Theorem. The team discuss the polarizing filter experiment, the EPR Paradox, probabilism, and determinism.

In Episode 34, Patrick and Ciprian speak with Dr Prineha Narang, Assistant Professor of Computational Materials Science at Harvard University.

Among other topics, the team discuss fundamental science, materials science, repeater applications, and scalable Quantum networks.

Prineha Narang is an Assistant Professor at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. Prior to joining the faculty, Prineha came to Harvard as a Ziff Environmental Fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment. She was also a Research Scholar in Condensed Matter Theory at the MIT Dept. of Physics, working on new theoretical methods to describe quantum interactions.

Prineha’s work has been recognized by many awards and special designations, including the Mildred Dresselhaus Prize,  a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award (Bessel Prize) from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, a Max Planck Sabbatical Award from the Max Planck Society, and the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Computational Physics in 2021,  a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2020, being named a Moore Inventor Fellow by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for innovations in quantum science and technology, CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, a Top Innovator by MIT Tech Review (MIT TR35), and a Young Scientist by the World Economic Forum in 2018. In 2017, she was named by Forbes Magazine on their “30under30” list for her work in atom-by-atom quantum engineering. Prineha designs materials at the smallest scale, using single atoms, to enable the leap to quantum technologies.

In Episode 33, Patrick and Ciprian speak with Alan Grau, Vice President of Business Development at PQShield. Among other topics, the team discuss emerging standards, the impact of quantum computing on cryptography, and how the security industry is adapting to future threats from quantum computers.

Alan Grau, VP Business Development, PQShield

Alan is a proven entrepreneur and technology executive focused on cybersecurity, IoT and embedded software solutions. He is VP, Business Development for PQShield, the leading provider of Post Quantum Crypto Solutions.  

Prior to joining PQShield Alan was VP of IoT & Embedded Solutions at Sectigo (formerly Comodo CA), the world’s largest commercial Certificate Authority. Alan joined Sectigo as part of the company’s acquisition of Icon Labs, a leading provider of security software for IoT and embedded devices, where he was President and co-founder, as well as the architect of Icon Labs' award-winning Floodgate Firewall. Icon Labs was named a 2014 Gartner “Cool Vendor” and 2015 Gartner “Select Vendor” focused on creating The Internet of Secure Things by providing security solutions for even the smallest IoT devices.  

Prior to founding Icon Labs, Alan worked for AT&T Bell Labs and Motorola. He is a frequent industry speaker and blogger and holds multiple patents related to telecommunication and security.

Alan has an MS in computer science from Northwestern University.

In Episode 32, Patrick and Ciprian speak with Bob Coecke, Chief Scientist at Quantinuum.

Among other topics, the team discuss the limitations of traditional natural language processing, how quantum natural language processing can be used in the future, and what problems it can solve.

Bob Coecke is Chief Scientist at Cambridge Quantum / Quantinuum.  

He also heads the Oxford-based Compositional Intelligence & Quantum NLP team and is Emeritus Professor at Wolfson College, Oxford University.

Previously, he was Professor of Quantum Foundations, Logics and Structures at the Computer Science department at Oxford University, where he was for 20 years, and co-founded, built, and led a multi-disciplinary research group of up to 50 people.

He supervised 66 PhD students. He pioneered Categorical Quantum Mechanics (now in AMS's MSC2020 classification), ZX-calculus, DisCoCat natural language meaning, mathematical foundations for resource theories, Quantum Natural Language Processing, and is co-author of Picturing Quantum Processes, a book providing a fully diagrammatic treatment of quantum theory and its applications.

He co-authored close to 200 research papers.

He's a founding father of the QPL (Quantum Physics and Logic) and ACT (Applied Category Theory) communities, the diamond open access journal Compositionality, and Cambridge University Press' Applied Category Theory book series.

He was the first person to have Quantum Foundations as part of his professorial title. His work headlined in various media outlets, including Forbes, New Scientist, PhysicsWorld, ComputerWeekly.