Quantum computers hold out the promise of revolutionizing the landscape of computing and society. UC-Berkeley is deeply committed to playing a major part in this revolution, by rapidly scaling its existing effort in this field, leveraging its existing interdisciplinary centers, BQIC (Berkeley Quantum Information and Computation Center) and CQCS (Center for Quantum Coherent Science), as well as close proximity of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL)---home of the $30M DOE quantum testbed effort. The new Quantum Computing & Information Science Faculty Fellow (QCIS-FF) hire in computer science, funded by this award, will expand the exploration of novel quantum algorithms and protocols for benchmarking and verifying quantum computers. It will also help to meet an exploding student demand for courses in QIS.
UC-Berkeley is poised at a singular moment in the field of quantum computing, with small to medium-scale quantum computers on the verge of becoming a reality. Moving forward, what is called for is an interdisciplinary effort that brings together experimental and theoretical physicists and computer scientists working on the full stack from experimental realization to benchmarking and quantum error correction, to designing quantum algorithms and applications and protocols for verifying quantum computations. The QCIS-FF award will help coalesce this interdisciplinary effort.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
