UW ECE Lytle Lecture: Quantum Computational Supremacy + Quantum Computing Research Panel

The University of Washington Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering’s Dean W. Lytle Endowed Lecture Series is just around the corner. The Lytle Lecture Series is UW ECE’s premier annual event, featuring internationally renowned researchers in the field of communications, signal processing, control systems, and machine learning.

This year, we are extremely excited to welcome keynote speaker Scott Aaronson, the David J. Bruton Professor of Computer Science and director of the Quantum Information Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Aaronson has an extensive background in electrical engineering and computer science, and conducts groundbreaking research investigating the capabilities and limits of quantum computers.

Lytle Lecture: Thursday, November 19 from 3:30 – 5:00 p.m. PST via Zoom

Abstract: Last fall, a team at Google announced the first-ever demonstration of “quantum computational supremacy”—that is, a clear quantum speedup over a classical computer for some task—using a 53-qubit programmable superconducting chip called Sycamore. Google’s accomplishment drew on a decade of research in my field of quantum complexity theory. This talk will discuss questions like: what exactly was the (contrived) problem that Sycamore solved? How does one verify the outputs using a classical computer? And how confident are we that the problem is classically hard—especially in light of subsequent counterclaims by IBM and others? I’ll end with a possible application that I’ve been developing for Google’s experiment: namely, the generation of trusted public random bits, for use (for example) in cryptocurrencies.

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Panel Discussion on Quantum Computing Research

In addition to Dr. Aaronson’s lecture, UW ECE will also host a panel discussion on cutting-edge quantum computing research earlier in the day from 10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m PST, via Zoom. The following experts in the field will participate in the discussion:

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