Quantum Colloquium

This colloquium series will feature talks by some of the foremost experts in quantum computation in the form of "an invitation to research in area X". With the explosion of interest in quantum computation, there is a dizzying flurry of results, as well as a diverse group of researchers who are drawn to this field. This colloquium series aims to target three audiences: 

  1. Experts in quantum computation: It is increasingly difficult for even experts to keep up with the results in adjacent areas. These colloquia will aim to identify the key results and techniques in the area, as well as the most important directions for further research. 
  2. Interested researchers in (classical) theoretical computer science: There are deep connections between ideas in quantum computation and classical complexity, algorithms, etc. These colloquia will make these connections more accessible to the broader TCS community. 
  3. Interested mathematical and physical science (MPS) researchers: These colloquia will enable MPS researchers to cut through the clutter to make connections to CS style results in quantum computation. 

Public Zoom webinar link: https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/95040632440

If you wish to receive ongoing info about talks in this series, or if you would like to be able to pose questions during the live sessions, please register to participate.

If you require accommodation for communication, please contact our Access Coordinator at simonsevents [at] berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible.

Fall 2022

Tuesday, Oct. 18, 11:00 am

Speaker: Chinmay Nirkhe (IBM Research)
11:00 am12:00 pm

Tuesday, Oct. 18, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Anand Natarajan (MIT), Dorit Aharonov (Hebrew University) and Matt Hastings (Microsoft Research); Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm

Tuesday, Oct. 25, 11:00 am

Speaker: Jens Eisert (Free University of Berlin)
11:00 am12:00 pm

Tuesday, Oct. 25, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Nick Hunter-Jones (Stanford), Nicole Yunger Halpern (University of Maryland), Scott Aaronson (UT Austin), and Vijay Balasubramanian (University of Pennsylvania); Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm

Tuesday, Nov. 8, 11:00 am

Tuesday, Nov. 8, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Nathan Wiebe (University of Toronto), Ryan O'Donnell (Carnegie Mellon University), and Tom Gur (University of Warwick); Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm

Tuesday, Nov. 29, 11:00 am

Tuesday, Nov. 29, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Adam Bouland (Stanford), Scott Aaronson (UT Austin), and Sergio Boixo (Google); Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm

Tuesday, Dec. 6, 11:00 am

Tuesday, Dec. 6, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Steve Flammia (AWS), Venkat Guruswami (UC Berkeley), and Debbie Leung (University of Waterloo); Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm
Spring 2022

Tuesday, Apr. 5, 11:00 am

Tuesday, Apr. 5, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Sergio Boixo (Google), Soonwon Choi (MIT), and Bill Fefferman (University of Chicago); Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm

Tuesday, Apr. 12, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Lin Lin (UC Berkeley), Birgitta Whaley (UC Berkeley), James Whitfield (Dartmouth), and Nathan Wiebe (University of Toronto); Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm

Tuesday, Apr. 19, 11:00 am

Tuesday, Apr. 19, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Yael Kalai (Microsoft Research), Vinod Vaikuntanathan (MIT), and Thomas Vidick (Caltech); Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm

Tuesday, Apr. 26, 11:00 am

Tuesday, Apr. 26, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Daniel Gottesman (University of Maryland), Matt Hastings (Microsoft Research), and Barbara Terhal (TU Delft); Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm

Tuesday, May 3, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Kenneth Brown (Duke University), Ignacio Cirac (Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics), Liang Jiang (University of Chicago), and Mark Saffman (UW Madison); Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm

Tuesday, May 10, 11:00 am

Tuesday, May 10, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Scott Aaronson (UT Austin), Geoffrey Penington (UC Berkeley), and Edward Witten (IAS); Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm
Fall 2021

Tuesday, Sep. 21, 11:00 am

Speaker: Sean Hallgren (Penn State University & Senior Visitor at Simons Institute 2021-22)
11:00 am12:30 pm

Tuesday, Sep. 21, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Lior Eldar (MIT), Vinod Vaikuntanathan (MIT), Daniel Apon (NIST), Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm

Tuesday, Oct. 5, 11:00 am

Tuesday, Oct. 5, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Adam Nahum (I'Ecole Normale Supérieure), Pedram Roushan (Google), Barbara Terhal (TU Delft), and Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm

Tuesday, Oct. 12, 11:00 am

Tuesday, Oct. 12, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Zvika Brakerski (Weizmann Institute), Anne Broadbent (U. Ottawa), Yael Kalai (Microsoft Research) and Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm

Tuesday, Oct. 19, 11:00 am

Tuesday, Oct. 19, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Patrick Coles (Los Alamos National Labs), Aram Harrow (MIT), Maria Schuld (UKZN and Xanadu), Jarrod McClean (Google), and Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm

Tuesday, Oct. 26, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Daniel Gottesman (University of Maryland), Shruti Puri (Yale University), Jonathan Home (ETH Zurich), Chen Wang (UMass Amherst), and Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm

Tuesday, Nov. 2, 11:00 am

Tuesday, Nov. 2, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Amir Safavi-Naeini (Stanford University), Daniel Litinski (PsiQuantum), Robert Raussendorf (University of British Columbia), and Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm

Tuesday, Nov. 9, 11:00 am

Tuesday, Nov. 9, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Andrew Childs (University of Maryland), Norman Yao (UC Berkeley), Markus Greiner (Harvard University), Monika Aidelsburger (University of Munich), and Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm

Tuesday, Nov. 16, 11:00 am

Tuesday, Nov. 16, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Chris Monroe (Duke University), Lieven Vandersypen (TU Delft), Mark Zhandry (Princeton University), and Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm

Tuesday, Nov. 30, 11:00 am

Tuesday, Nov. 30, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Panel featuring Scott Aaronson (UT Austin), Dorit Aharonov (Hebrew University), Ignacio Cirac (Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics), Elad Hazan (Princeton). Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator).
12:00 pm1:00 pm
Spring 2021

Tuesday, Jan. 26, 11:00 am

Tuesday, Feb. 9, 11:00 am

Tuesday, Feb. 16, 11:00 am

Speaker: Nathan Wiebe (University of Washington)
11:00 am12:00 pm

Tuesday, Feb. 23, 11:00 am

Speaker: Dorit Aharonov (Hebrew University)
11:00 am12:00 pm

Tuesday, Mar. 2, 11:00 am

Speaker: Daniel Gottesman (Perimeter Institute)
11:00 am12:00 pm

Tuesday, Mar. 9, 11:00 am

Speaker: Rui Chao (Duke University)
11:00 am12:00 pm

Tuesday, Mar. 9, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Rui Chao (Duke University), Daniel Gottesman (Perimeter Institute), John Martinis (Silicon Quantum Computing), John Preskill (Caltech), Peter Shor (MIT), Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator)
12:00 pm12:30 pm

Tuesday, Mar. 16, 10:30 am

Tuesday, Mar. 16, 11:00 am

Speaker: Matthias Troyer (Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft Quantum)
11:00 am12:00 pm

Tuesday, Mar. 16, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Garnet Chan (Caltech), Matthew Hastings (Microsoft Quantum), Mikhail Lukin (Harvard University), Birgitta Whaley (UC Berkeley), Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator)
12:00 pm12:30 pm

Tuesday, Mar. 30, 11:00 am

Speaker: Ewin Tang (University of Washington)
11:00 am12:00 pm

Tuesday, Mar. 30, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Scott Aaronson (UT Austin), Andras Gilyen (Caltech), Ravi Kannan (MSR India), Iordanis Kerenidis (Univ Paris & QC-Ware), Patrick Rebentrost (CQT), Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator)
12:00 pm12:30 pm

Tuesday, Apr. 6, 10:15 am

Tuesday, Apr. 6, 11:00 am

Tuesday, Apr. 13, 11:00 am

Speaker: Ignacio Cirac (Max Planck Institute, Munich)
11:00 am12:00 pm

Tuesday, Apr. 13, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Immanuel Bloch (LMU, Munich), Aram Harrow (MIT), Mikhail Lukin (Harvard), Matthias Troyer (Microsoft Quantum), Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator)
12:00 pm12:30 pm

Tuesday, Apr. 20, 10:00 am

Speaker: Mark Zhandry (Princeton University)
10:00 am11:00 am

Tuesday, Apr. 20, 11:00 am

Speaker: Boaz Barak (Harvard), Dan Boneh (Stanford), Daniele Micciancio (UCSD), Michele Mosca (U. Waterloo), Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator)
11:00 am11:30 am

Tuesday, Apr. 27, 11:00 am

Speaker: John Preskill (California Institute of Technology)
11:00 am12:00 pm

Tuesday, Apr. 27, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Scott Aaronson (UT Austin), Sergio Boixo (Google), Joseph Emerson (Quantum Benchmark), Steven Flammia (AWS Center for QC), Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator)
12:00 pm12:30 pm

Tuesday, May 4, 11:00 am

Speaker: Henry Yuen (Columbia University)
11:00 am12:00 pm

Tuesday, May 4, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Marius Junge (UIUC), William Slofstra (Univ of Waterloo), Madhu Sudan (Harvard), Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator)
12:00 pm12:30 pm

Tuesday, May 11, 11:00 am

Speaker: Ronald de Wolf (QuSoft, CWI and University of Amsterdam)
11:00 am12:00 pm

Tuesday, May 11, 12:00 pm

Speaker: Andrew Childs (UMD), Eddie Farhi (MIT/Google), Ashley Montanaro (U. Bristol), Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator)
12:00 pm12:30 pm