Graduate Seminar: What is Quantum Computing and Why Would You Care?

Abstract

Quantum Computing (QC) is a type of computing paradigm that uses principles of quantum mechanics to represent information and perform computations. This presentation will provide an overview to the field of QC covering topics like how information is represented and manipulated with quantum programs, current trends in QC systems that are readily accessible for free by cloud-based providers, and potential applications of QC technology.

Biography of Speaker

E. Wes Bethel is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at San Francisco State University, and a Research Affiliate at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His technical interests include high performance scientific computing, scientific visualization and computer graphics, image analysis and computer vision, scientific machine learning, quantum computing, scientific data science, and their collective application to challenging scientific data understanding problems. Prior to SFSU, he was a Senior Computer Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where he grew and managed a research portfolio in data-intensive scientific computing. He has worked in industry, where he founded and ran a technology-based company focusing on graphics and visualization, has architected computational and data-intensive methods for numerous novel hardware platforms, and has helped shape the R&D trajectory of HPC visualization and data science through service to technical program management in the US Department of Energy. He is an Associate Member of IEEE, a member of ACM/SIGHPC and ACM/SIGGRAPH, and is an ACM Distinguished Scientist.