[CSEE Talk] talk: Quantum Annealing Computer for Real-World Applications, 2pm Mon 10/26 ITE325b

[Tim Finin]

                CHMPR Distinguished Lecture Series

            PROGRAMMING AND TUNING A QUANTUM ANNEALING
             COMPUTER TO SOLVE REAL-WORLD APPLICATIONS

                    Dr. Alejandro Perdomo-Ortiz
            Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
                     NASA Ames Research Center

              2:00pm Monday 26 October 2015, ITE 325b

Since September 2013 and through a partnership with Google and USRA,
NASA Ames Research Center has been working with a quantum device that
has the promise of harnessing quantum-mechanical effects to speed up
the solution of optimization problems. Solving real-world applications
with quantum algorithms requires overcoming several challenges,
ranging from translating the computational problem at hand to the
quantum-machine language, to tuning several other parameters of the
quantum algorithm that have a significant impact on performance of the
device. In this talk, we discuss these challenges, strategies
developed to enhance performance, and also a more efficient
implementation of several applications. Although we will focus on
applications of interest to NASA's Quantum Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory (http://bit.ly/QuAIl), the methods and concepts presented
here apply to a broader family of hard discrete optimization problems
that might also be present in many machine-learning algorithms.

Alejandro Perdomo-Ortiz (http://bit.ly/prdmo) is a Research Scientist
at NASA Ames Research Center, Quantum Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory, where he works in the design of quantum algorithms to
solve hard optimization problems. Alejandro received a Ph.D. in
Chemical Physics from Harvard University. He is a three-time winner of
Harvard's Certificate of Excellence in Teaching and a recipient of the
Dudley R. Herschbach Teaching Award. He is originally from Cali,
Colombia where he performed undergraduate studies in Chemistry at
Universidad del Valle. Within the NASA team, he is interested in
understanding the scalability and performance of quantum annealing
algorithms and their realistic experimental implementations for broad
applications in space exploration research.

Host: Prof. Milton Halem, halem at umbc.edu

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