21st Patras Workshop on Axions, WIMPs and WISPs

From prehistoric qubits to building a useful quantum computer

12 Nov 2026, 10:40

40m

University of Western Australia

Plenary Presentation Plenary Talk

Speaker

Prof. John Martinis (University of California Santa Barbara)

Description

In the span of four decades, quantum computation has evolved from an intellectual curiosity to a potentially realizable technology. I will describe my thesis work on macroscopic quantum tunneling and energy-level quantization that led to the Nobel Prize, as well as several other important experiments that advanced superconducting qubits.

Nevertheless, the path toward a full-stack scalable technology is a work in progress. There are significant outstanding quantum hardware, fabrication, architecture, and algorithmic challenges that must be solved. Here, we show how the road to scaling could be paved by adopting existing semiconductor technology to build much higher-quality qubits and employing system engineering approaches.