MSU Workshop on Quantum Information Science: Are we at the crossroads?

Michigan State University, East Lansing MI

Investigators

Abstract

This is a proposal to support the participation of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers at a workshop at Michigan State University in Quantum Information Science (QIS). The workshop will be held on the campus of MSU at the Kellogg Conference Center from October 1-3, 2018. The field of quantum information science (QIS) is in a nascent state with several academic, industrial and government groups striving to understand the basic physics, and to build and control many-qubit systems. QIS is approaching a tipping point where the realization of practical quantum computing systems is imminent. Considering this a workshop at Michigan State University will be held to bring together a broad community of researchers working on QIS to discuss the near future of the field, including the physical implementations of quantum computers, the most interesting open questions in the field, and the challenging fundamental and applied problems of quantum science. A primary goal of the meeting is for the scientific program is the exploration of the ideas and open questions in the field of QIS. The workshop will provide a venue where these ideas and questions will be discussed as intellectual leaders in the field come together to present new results and discuss how to navigate the scientific and technological landscape of the field as it develops. The broader impacts include scientific, application-oriented, and educational/outreach components. Researcher from both inside and outside of academia will be attending the conference. The inclusion of participants from outside of academia will provide an opportunity to student and postdoctoral attendees to learn about the quantum research and technology development going on at companies and industry labs such as Google, IBM, and MITRE. In this sense the workshop will provide an excellent complement to the cross-disciplinary training of a diverse group of graduate, undergraduate, and postdoctoral students. 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.