2025: Year of Quantum
How physics at the smallest scales impacts materials, human health, computing, communications and more
“Accurate quantum computing”
Abhinav Kandala (IBM)
Principal Research Scientist, IBM Quantum
February 22, 2025
100 Thomas Building
11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
The fundamental building blocks of quantum computers — quantum bits or qubits — have error rates that are over 20 orders of magnitude worse than their classical counterparts. How can one hope to perform accurate calculations with such noisy computers? Fortunately, there exists a well-accepted solution to this challenge, in theory — quantum error correction. In practice though, this requires encoding quantum information in a large network of qubits, which remains a significant engineering challenge. In the absence of such a large-scale error corrected quantum computer, the question remains — is it possible to perform accurate computations with existing noisy processors? Can these computations be performed at scales that challenge classical computation? This talk will address these questions, while presenting an overview of the state of quantum computing today, and a view into where this technology will evolve in coming years.
Abhinav Kandala is an experimental physicist and a principal research scientist at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. He currently leads the Quantum Capabilities and Demonstrations team, building the tools for executing large quantum circuits and exploring beyond-classical quantum computation. His work at IBM has spanned the control and coherence of superconducting qubits, multi-qubit characterization, deployment and applications of quantum computers. His most significant contributions have been towards exploring whether useful information can be obtained from near-term quantum processors. In 2023, he led the “quantum utility” experiment. Kandala received his B. Tech in Engineering Physics from IIT Bombay in 2008. He then pursued his graduate research in experimental condensed matter physics, in the group of Nitin Samarth, Verne M. Willaman Professor of Physics and professor of materials science and engineering at Penn State and received his Ph.D. in 2015. He was recognized by MIT Tech Review as one of 35 innovators under 35 in 2019, and by IIT Bombay with a Young Alumni Achiever award in 2024.