Post by Andris Huang

Thinking about it, the top two questions I got from new friends joining Quantum Computing are that, why do people want to do QC, and how do they start. To be honest, these are really some of the hardest questions because they have infinite solutions. To me, QC is more than just a new way of doing computations. It more so represents an interdisciplinary effort in developing tools given by nature. Even if some of the current research may not seem impactful, the persistence and collaborations behind each project are really the keys for technological advancements of any kind. In Quantum Computing at Berkeley, we want to foster this type of collaborative research community and demonstrate that undergrad students can also make meaningful contributions to the field as long as they have the commitments, that’s why we organized the undergraduate research conference last Saturday. During the conference, I was deeply impressed by student researchers' problem solving techniques from different perspectives. I was also inspired by the experts from industry, with special thanks to our amazing speakers Erik Garcell, PhD, Ryder LiuLin, Favour Nerrise, and Ieva Liepuoniute, Ph.D.. Lastly, I would like to thank my teammates Samyak Surti, Elias Lehman, Jyoti Rani, Sidharth Duthaluru, Owen Bardeen, Jenny Chen, Nathan Song, and Xiangwei Kong for their help in making this event happen. Going back to the questions from the beginning, I still don’t have the best answer, but I believe that with our efforts we are finding an eigenbasis of the solution space. #quantumcomputing #community #research #students #event #industry