Current graduate students
Dhinakaran Vinayagamurthy
Trusted-execution environments (TEE) like Intel SGX provide a promise for practical secure computations on users' sensitive data in untrusted computing environments like cloud and blockchains. TEEs are designed using a combination of hardware enforced access controls and cryptography. While there is extensive research on attacking and hardening the access control mechanisms, the advent of quantum computers also requires hardening the cryptography used by TEEs for their long-term security against quantum adversaries.
FemPhys' annual mentoring night is back! And this time we are co-hosting it with the Perimeter Institute.
Come meet and mingle with tons of STEM mentors from all over the world. Free food will be provided by Perimeter's amazing Black Hole Bistro.
Ken Andersen, Neutron Instruments Division, European Spallation Source ERIC
The European Spallation Source is currently under construction in Lund, Sweden. It is designed to provide world-leading performance, with instruments optimized for the long-pulse time structure of the facility, making full use of the world’s brightest neutron beams for the study of materials ranging from biological systems and soft matter to engineering materials, structural chemistry and magnetism.
Jun Fan, City University of Hong Kong
Two-dimensional nanomaterials could cause structural disruption and cytotoxic effects to cells, which greatly challenges their promising biomedical applications including biosensing, bioimaging, and drug delivery. Here, interactions between lipid liposomes and hydrophobic nanosheets is studied utilizing coarse-grained (CG) molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The simulations reveal a variety of interaction morphologies that depend on the size and the orientation of nanosheets.
The 2nd of the ninth session of the IP lecture series (3) hosted by CW21 will be launched on Tuesday, Nov 20th at noon.
Light sandwiches and beverages will be provided by RSVP.
Details of the session:
What is patentable?
When: Tuesday, Nov 20th at noon
Where: QNC1201
Raymond Laflamme, Department of Physics and Astronomy; Institute for Quantum Computing
Stephen Hawking passed away leaving behind a transformed view of the cosmos. He proved that time had a beginning if Einstein's general relativity is correct, that black ain't so black after all and he proposed that the Universe can be described by a quantum mechanical wave function with no edge or boundaries. From 1984 to 1988 I was one of Stephen's graduate students and worked on quantum cosmology and the arrow of time which earned me a quote in the book: "A Brief History of Time".
Neutron whispering gallery
Dr Valery Nesvizhevsky, European Centre for Neutron Research, Institut Laue-Langevin
The "whispering gallery" effect has been known since ancient times for sound waves in air, later in water and more recently for a broad range of electromagnetic waves: radio, optics, Roentgen and so on. It consists of wave localization near a curved reflecting surface and is expected for waves of various natures, for instance, for atoms and neutrons. For matter waves, it would include a new feature: a massive particle would be settled in quantum states, with parameters depending on its mass. In 2010, we observed the quantum whispering gallery effect for cold neutrons and since then continue increasing the precision in these experiments.
The "blood, sweat, tears, toil and triumphs" of commercializing technology
Marc Morin is the co-founder and CEO of Auvik Networks, creators of cloud-based software that makes it dramatically easier for IT managed service providers to monitor and manage their clients' IT networks. A serial entrepreneur, Marc has previously co-founded several successful companies, including PixStream (acquired by Cisco for USD$369 million) and Sandvine (Sold to Francisco Partners for CAD$582 million), and is a seed investor in a number of local tech companies.
Henry Yuen, University of Toronto
An outstanding open question in quantum information theory concerns the computational complexity of nonlocal games. in a nonlocal game, a classical verifier interacts with multiple players that cannot communicate, but are allowed to share entanglement. In a recent breakthrough result, Slofstra showed that the following problem is undecidable: given a nonlocal game, is there a quantum strategy for the players to win with probability 1?
QUANTUM + Pop Culture
“Quantum physics” has taken its position with “rocket science” in pop culture as a shorthand for frighteningly complicated science. Quantum physics has also taken on a sort of magical connotation in fiction, with features like entanglement, superposition, and tunneling spurring imagination. But where does the science draw the line? How much is joyful speculation, and how much is disregard for reality? And if it’s always seen as either magical or scary, how does that affect the perception of quantum science?
