Faculty

Meet graduate student researchers from science, engineering, and mathematics and hear how they discovered quantum information science, found their way into research, and how the skills they gained in their undergraduate studies are helping them develop the next generation of quantum technology.

There's growing awareness of the lack of diversity in science and the presence of barriers to inclusion. What factors lead to disparities in representation? Why should we be motivated to effect change? What can we do to change things? Will our actions really make a difference? 

This presentation will focus on ideas to challenge the status quo – actions to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). We will discuss recent research to illustrate and raise awareness of the many EDI challenges in science, then explore various practical ways to take action to advance EDI. These practical actions stem from our recently released "Science is For Everyone" Teaching toolkit, which provides an abundance of ideas to diversify science education and further support recruitment, retention, and advancement of all students. We will touch on the importance of diversifying content and talk about how Indigenous content is being brought into post-secondary science courses. Finally, we will give an overview of other exciting science EDI initiatives across research and academic life.

On behalf of the IQC-GSA, we invite you to the IQC RAC BBQ. We hope to see everyone on Friday, September 16^th. Please bring your friends, advisors, group members, and batchmates! We are especially happy to welcome new members of IQC and we hope everyone will take this opportunity to interact with other IQC members and visit RAC.

The Quantum Innovators in Computer Science and Mathematics workshop brings together promising researchers working on theoretical aspects of quantum information and computation in computer science and mathematics. Guests are invited for a three-day conference aimed at exploring the frontier of our field. 

The Quantum Innovators in science and engineering workshop brings together the most promising young researchers in quantum physics and engineering. Guests are invited for a three-day conference aimed at exploring the frontier of our field.

Monday, October 3 QNC 0101
Tuesday, October 4 RAC1 2009
Wednesday, October 5 QNC 0101

Join us for Quantum Today, where we sit down with researchers from the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) to talk about their work, its impact and where their research may lead.

TQT’s Quantum For Health (Q4Health), is open to all at the University of Waterloo, seeking opportunities where quantum can advance health.

On September 19, TQT will host a Q4Health Launch Event in the Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre Rm 0101. This event will include descriptions of quantum for health case studies. Following the talks, there will be a meet and greet to assist in team building. Attendees will receive information updates and an opportunity to register and learn more about upcoming Lunch and Learn sessions.

Register by September 16 (for refreshment planning purposes). There will be limited onsite registration at the event.

Stacey Jefferey - QuSoft

While the quantum query complexity of k-distinctness is known to be O(n^{3/4−1/4(2k−1)}) for any constant k≥4, the best previous upper bound on the time complexity was ~O(n^{1−1/k}). We give a new upper bound of ~O(n^{3/4−1/4(2k−1)}) on the time complexity, matching the query complexity up to polylogarithmic factors. In order to achieve this upper bound, we give a new technique for designing quantum walk search algorithms, which is an extension of the electric network framework. We also show how to solve the welded trees problem in O(n) queries and O(n^2) time using this new technique, showing that the new quantum walk framework can achieve exponential speedups.

Jonathan Lavoie, Experimental Physicist, Xanadu Quantum Technologies

A quantum computer attains computational advantage when outperforming the best classical computers running the best-known algorithms on well-defined tasks. No photonic machine offering programmability over all its quantum gates has demonstrated quantum computational advantage: previous machines were largely restricted to static gate sequences. I will discuss a quantum computational advantage using Borealis, the latest of Xanadu’s photonic processors offering dynamic programmability and available on the cloud. This work is a critical milestone on the path to a practical quantum computer, validating key technological features of photonics as a platform for this goal.