The Center for Quantum Engineering (CQE) Kick-off Symposium
The MIT-CQE is dedicated to the academic pursuit and practice of quantum science and engineering to accelerate the practical application of quantum technologies for the betterment of humankind.
On October 30, 2020, the Center for Quantum Engineering (CQE) held a kick-off Symposium to mark their new partnership with the Laboratory for Physical Sciences (LPS) and the NSA. The event hosted more than 70 people online with more than 10 speakers from both the NSA/LPS and MIT.
The event commenced with an introduction of CQE by Charlie Tahan, Chief Scientist of LPS, and William Oliver, Director of CQE. This introduction was followed by the welcome remarks from Maria Zuber (VPR, MIT), Mark Segal (Research Director, NSA), Eric Evans (Director, MIT Lincoln Lab), Rob Cunningham (Director, LPS), and Marc Baldo (RLE Director, MIT).
The remarks were followed by a series of technical talks from faculty and researchers at MIT, including the newly appointed “Doc Bedard” Fellows. Through the generous support of the NSA/LPS, the CQE will support eight “Doc Bedard” 3-year graduate fellowships, named for pioneering NSA/LPS researcher Fernand “Doc” Bedard.
Dr. Jeremy Kepner, Laboratory Fellow at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and Dr. Daniel Sanchez, Associate Professor of EECS, presented the broad offerings at MIT in high-performance classical computing hardware and architectures. The “Doc Bedard” fellows Chris McNally, Kyle DeBry, and Sujit Rao, Sujit’s advisor, Dr. Anand Natarajan, Assistant Professor of EECS, and LPS sponsored researcher Bright Ye spoke about their respective research projects in quantum information science and technology.
Additionally, Maddie Sutula, the iQuHACK chair for the student-led Interdisciplinary Quantum Information Science and Engineering (iQuISE) program, spoke about the CQE-iQuISE partnership and educational activities, including the MIT-CQE iQuISE Seminar Series and the annual iQuHACK quantum hack-a-thon.