{"id":30466,"date":"2026-10-09T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/?p=30466"},"modified":"2026-10-08T14:05:04","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T18:05:04","slug":"join-the-2026-ta-you-wu-lecture-in-physics-from-prehistoric-qubits-to-building-a-useful-quantum-computer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/2026\/10\/09\/join-the-2026-ta-you-wu-lecture-in-physics-from-prehistoric-qubits-to-building-a-useful-quantum-computer\/","title":{"rendered":"Join the 2026 Ta-You Wu Lecture in Physics: From Prehistoric Qubits to Building a Useful Quantum Computer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In the span of four decades, quantum computation has evolved from an intellectual curiosity to a potentially realizable technology. John M. Martinis will describe his 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaker Information<\/strong><\/h2><\/div>\n\n\n\n

John M. Martinis, a 2025 Nobel Laureate in physics, is a distinguished professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the chief technology officer of Qolab. He received the Nobel Prize alongside John Clarke and Michel Devoret for their foundational 1980s experiments demonstrating that quantum-mechanical behaviors \u2014 specifically, macroscopic quantum tunneling \u2014 can occur in man-made electrical circuits. This breakthrough laid the structural groundwork for modern superconducting qubits that power today’s quantum computing processors. Previously, he led the quantum hardware effort at Google, where his team achieved the historic milestone of “quantum supremacy” in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n