In our new season we feature members of the cluster who are working at the intersection to other stakeholders in the larger quantum community. In this episode, we talk to Tommaso Calarco, Director of the PGI Institute for Quantum Control at Forschungszentrum Jülich, professor for Theoretical Physics at the University of Cologne and member of ML4Q. We discuss how he started working on apparently useless science which soon turned out to be the future of quantum. We also talk about many synergies: between theory and experiment, science and government as well as academia and rising startups in the field.

00:00:00 Intro

00:01:20 Early work in the late 90s on apparently useless physics (foundations of quantum mechanics) and recognizing the technology potential in this science

00:06:24 Are you still interested in the foundations of quantum physics today?

00:09:04 Working on neutral atoms for superconducting platforms in Innsbruck with Peter Zoller

00:11:26 How similar is the current neutral ion quantum computer to the things that you thought about 20 years ago? Talking about hyped vs. underhyped experiments

00:14:55 Working with Mikhail Lukin at Harvard University

00:16:52 Current research on quantum control theory (along with a bit of hype control) – Talking about the interwining of theory and experiment, building teams and diversifying them to cover different competencies

00:27:24 Plethora of quantum computer prototypes at Forschungszentrum Jülich and how it is influencing the future research on quantum control (correction: note that at

00:28:40 Tommaso refers to the midterm review of ML4Q not OpenSuperQ)

00:28:26 1 or 2?

00:33:24 Politics and the background of the quantum manifesto

00:36:38 Quantum hype

00:42:13 The flagship progam and European bureaucracy

00:45:27 Was Brexit a blow? How much did research in UK suffer?

00:47:34 Synergy between EU funding programs and other national funding structures

00:50:02 Different governance dynamics in quantum research between Europe and the US

00:55:32 Quantum startups and exit strategies

01:01:38 Education in IP, entrepreneurship and economics

Visit https://ml4q.de/ml4qa/ for more podcast episodes.

Visit https://ml4q.de/stories/ for more stories from our researchers at ML4Q.

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Homepage of the PGI-8 Institute for Quantum Control:
https://www.fz-juelich.de/de/pgi/pgi-8

Homepage of Qruise: https://qruise.com/

Contact Tommaso via E-mail: t.calarco(at)fz-juelich.de
or via LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tommaso-calarco-7a762982

Host: Christian Dickel

Music:

Technology by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Discovery by Scott Buckley | https://soundcloud.com/scottbuckley Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Title: Lunar Levitation
Artist: Aakash Gandhi