Amesh Wazirani awarded a $2.4 million grant from DOE – Berkeley Engineering

October 30, 2023 by Marnie Ellery

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded Umesh Wazirani, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, $2.4 million for exploratory research in quantum computing.

Vaziranis’ work will focus on a major challenge in quantum computing: demonstrating the advantage of quantum computing on short-lived NISQ computers. One of his goals will be to discover new ideas for developing noise-resistant quantum computing with minimal overhead. His goal is to study the various sources of destructive noise factors that affect the accuracy of quantum computing and to develop techniques to measure and potentially correct them.

According to Vazirani, stabilization of quantum computers is the most important challenge for making quantum computers practical. This is a fundamental step towards realizing the massive speedups promised by quantum algorithms for breaking modern cryptography and quantum simulation, and could potentially accelerate machine learning.

Part of the Vaziranis project will be hosted at the Simmons Institute for Theory of Computation and will benefit from the expertise of postdoctoral researchers in the quantum research pod and visitors from many institutions. The project will also help fund meetings designed to bring together a diverse group of researchers to exchange ideas and collaborate.

In addition to the Waziranis grant, DOE recently awarded a total of more than $2 million to the following engineering professors for their innovative research projects:

• Alan Goldstein, professor of civil and environmental engineering and environmental science, policy and management, will study aerosol chemistry to advance our understanding of clouds, aerosols, precipitation, and thermodynamic processes associated with climate.
• Raluca Scarlett, assistant professor of nuclear engineering, will use new electrode geometry designs to study hydrogen concentration and diffusion in FLiBe, a molten salt coolant used in nuclear reactors.
• Vladimir Stojanovich, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, will collaborate with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to develop a modeling and evaluation framework for a supercomputer system based on zeta-scale superconducting electronics.
• Carl Van Bieber, professor of nuclear engineering, will lead a team of scientists searching for an ultralight but very dense particle called an axion that may give rise to local dark matter in our galaxy.