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January 19, 2020

No events scheduled

February 06, 2020

HotTopics: Quantum Computational Supremacy and Its Applications

Prof. Scott Aaronson
The University of Texas at Austin

Part Of

4:00P
- 5:00P

Location

Patil/Kiva, 32-G449
32-G449
Add to Calendar 2020-02-06 16:00:00 2020-02-06 17:00:00 America/New_York HotTopics: Quantum Computational Supremacy and Its Applications Abstract:This fall, a team at Google announced the first-ever demonstration of "quantum computational supremacy"---that is, a clear quantum speedup over a classical computer for some task---using a 53-qubit programmable superconducting chip called Sycamore. In addition to the engineering accomplishment, Google's experiment built on a decade of research in quantum complexity theory, some of which we did at MIT with students including Alex Arkhipov and Lijie Chen. This talk will discuss questions like: what exactly was the contrived problem that Google solved? How does one verify the outputs using a classical computer? And how confident are we that the problem is classically hard---especially in light of subsequent counterclaims by IBM? I'll end with a proposed application for Google's experiment---namely, the generation of certified random bits, for use (for example) in proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies---that I've been developing and that Google is now working to demonstrate.Bio: Scott Aaronson is David J. Bruton Centennial Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his bachelor's from Cornell University and his PhD from UC Berkeley. Before coming to UT Austin, he spent nine years as a professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. Aaronson's research in theoretical computer science has focused mainly on the capabilities and limits of quantum computers. His first book, Quantum Computing Since Democritus, was published in 2013 by Cambridge University Press. He received the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award, the United States PECASE Award, the Vannevar Bush Fellowship, the Tomassoni-Chisesi Prize in Physics, and MIT's Junior Bose Award for Excellence in Teaching.Light refreshments will be served at 3:45pm Patil/Kiva, 32-G449 Belfer sarah_donahue@hks.harvard.edu

February 07, 2020

Private Event

First Friday Lunch with Amar Gupta: Better Healthcare at Lower Cost

Amar Gupta
MIT CSAIL
12:00P
- 1:00P

Location

Star Conference Room, 32-D463
Add to Calendar 2020-02-07 12:00:00 2020-02-07 13:00:00 America/New_York First Friday Lunch with Amar Gupta: Better Healthcare at Lower Cost New Approaches, Products, and Services thru Novel Technologies, Strategies, and Policies Fostered by Industry-Academia CollaborationThe presentation will focus on leveraging innovations in technologies and processes and surmounting of continuing barriers in the area of interoperability. Dr. Gupta will include examples of how such barriers were overcome across industries thru multi-organization collaboration, as well as a brief overview of recent efforts in the area of enhancing quality and safety of digital health products and services.About First Friday Lunches First Friday Lunches are informal gatherings open to members who would like to come by the lab for a discussion on a current project. Most lunches will feature a Faculty Researcher but a few will feature a PhD student, post-doc or Research Scientist. If you are not local but still want to participate, call in numbers as well as skype/webex connections will be made available. Please register for the lunch and indicate that you would like to participate remotely. Star Conference Room, 32-D463 Belfer sarah_donahue@hks.harvard.edu

February 12, 2020

Chasing Convex Bodies

Mark Sellke
Stanford
4:00P
- 5:00P

Location

32-G575
Add to Calendar 2020-02-12 16:00:00 2020-02-12 17:00:00 America/New_York Chasing Convex Bodies Abstract: I will explain our recent understanding of the chasing convex bodies problem posed by Friedman and Linial in 1993. In this problem, a player receives a request sequence K_1,...,K_T of convex sets in d dimensional space and moves online into each requested set. The player's movement cost is the length of the resulting path. Chasing convex bodies asks to find an online algorithm with cost competitive against the offline (in hindsight) optimal path. This is both an challenging metrical task system and (equivalent to) a competitive analysis view on online convex optimization.This problem was open for d>2 until recently but has since been solved twice. The first solution gives a 2^{O(d)} competitive algorithm while the second gives a nearly optimal min(d,sqrt(d*log(T))) competitive algorithm for T requests. The latter result is based on the Steiner point, which is the exact optimal solution to a related geometric problem called Lipschitz selection and dates from 1840. I will briefly outline the first solution and fully explain the second.Partially based on joint work with Sébastien Bubeck, Bo'az Klartag, Yin Tat Lee, and Yuanzhi Li. 32-G575 Belfer sarah_donahue@hks.harvard.edu

March 04, 2020

May 06, 2020