Quantum computing: What it is, and how we do it

Dr Michael Dinneen will give an explanation (for novices) of what quantum computing is, and compare it to traditional digital/classical computing.

Currently there are three main types of quantum computers that are being proposed and built, which are based on quantum circuit gates, adiabatic quantum annealing, and quantum walks on graphs.

These are being promoted by big name companies like IBM, Google, D-Wave, Rigetti and IonQ.

Dr Dinneen will discuss the School of Computer Science’s active research using a D-Wave 2X quantum computer, which is located at the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computation Center.

After introducing the basic computational model, Dr Dinneen will give a tutorial on how one formulates a simple (but NP-hard) computational optimisation problem so that one can then embed, run/solve, and process/decode the results obtained from these adiabatic quantum computers.

Our Speaker | Dr Michael Dinneen, School of Computer Science, University of Auckland

Dr Michael J Dinneen received his PhD from the University of Victoria, Canada, in 1996, and started as a lecturer at the University of Auckland the same year. He was hired to co-teach several algorithms classes (undergraduate and postgraduate) with Peter B Gibbons.

Prior to that he worked for several years at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA, working on grandchallenge combinatorial search and optimisation problems using supercomputers, such as those developed by Cray Research.

Besides his specialty of graph theory and algorithms, he does research on unconventional models of computation such as (adiabatic) quantum computing and membrane computing, culminating in over 100 research papers.

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