Mexican quantum computing pioneer ventures to answer nature's mysteries

TEC DE MONTERREY/DICYT There is a very small number of quantum computers in the world, and when NASA in collaboration with Google recently purchased one of the most advanced models manufactured by Canada's D-Wave and installed it at NASA's Ames Research Center at what they named the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (QuAIL), it decided to donate 20% of its number crunching time to the international scientific community. To this end, it put out a call for proposals.

One of the winning proposals was "Optimizing information flow through complex networks" led by Tecnológico de Monterrey School of Engineering and Sciences researcher Salvador Elías Venegas-Andraca, PhD. For that reason, the project was assigned to the Tec, and will have as collaborators William de la Cruz, PhD., Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México researcher; Marco Lanzagorta, PhD., who works at the United States' Department of the Navy; and Alejandro Perdomo-Ortiz, PhD, full-time researcher at the Ames Center.

Dr. Venegas-Andraca, who leads the only quantum algorithm research group in Mexico, explains that for computer scientists like himself, quantum computing is useful because the promise it holds is that we can use the Laws of Physics to build better computers and algorithms than we have today and therefore, faster equipment.

"My aim is to understand how to use the properties of matter... the Laws of Quantum Physics to build algorithms that will allow us to solve mathematical problems and their later application that are relevant to scientific research and its application in the modern world," Dr. Venegas-Andraca stated.