2020

The 6th Annual SCI Summer Research Colloquium took place via virtual conferencing on Friday, August 7th, 2020.

2020 Awards for Best Oral Presentations & Posters

Platinum SCI Oral Presentation Award
Lauren Warning (CHEM, Link)
Natsumi Komatsu (ECE, Kono)

Gold SCI Oral Presentation Award
Nicolas Marquez Peraca (PHYS, Kono)
Dinler Antunes (CS, Kavraki)

Silver SCI Oral Presentation Award
Yara Kadria-Vili (CHEM, Halas)
Vanessa Espinoza (CHEM, Weisman)
Christian Jacobson (CHEM, Halas)

Bronze SCI Oral Presentation Award
Joseph Whalen (PHYS, Killian)
Jaime Moya (AP, Morosan)
Sunny Gupta (MSNE, Yakobson)
Behnaz Ostovar (ECE, Link)

Outstanding Poster Award
Lauren McCarthy (CHEM, Link)
Fu Yang Tay (ECE, Kono)

People's Choice Poster Award
Te Faye Yap (Mechanical Engineering, Preston)

Scott Aaronson

Keynote Speaker

Scott Aaronson (UT Austin)
Inaugural Keynote Speaker of the Kavli-SCI Quantum Sciences Seminar Series
"Quantum Computational Supremacy and Its Applications"

Last fall, a team at Google announced the first-ever demonstration of "quantum computational supremacy"---that is, a clear quantum speedup over a classical computer for some task---using a 53-qubit programmable superconducting chip called Sycamore. Google's accomplishment drew on a decade of research in my field of quantum complexity theory. This talk will discuss questions like: what exactly was the (contrived) problem that Sycamore solved? How does one verify the outputs using a classical computer? And how confident are we that the problem is classically hard---especially in light of subsequent counterclaims by IBM and others? I'll end with a possible application for Google's experiment---namely, the generation of trusted public random bits, for use (for example) in cryptocurrencies---that I've been developing and that Google and NIST are now working to test.

Bio: Scott Aaronson is David J. Bruton Centennial Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his bachelor's from Cornell University and his PhD from UC Berkeley. Before coming to UT Austin, he spent nine years as a professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. Aaronson's research in theoretical computer science has focused mainly on the capabilities and limits of quantum computers. His first book, Quantum Computing Since Democritus, was published in 2013 by Cambridge University Press. He received the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award, the United States PECASE Award, and the Tomassoni-Chisesi Prize in Physics.

Student Presenter Application Instructions

  • Please download and use this template and follow all instructions.
  • The deadline for abstract submission to be considered for an oral presentation is 5:00 PM, Wednesday, July 15.
  • After this deadline all abstracts will be considered for poster presentations only.
  • You will be notified via email if you have been selected as an oral presenter by July 22.
  • Submissions that are not selected for oral presentation will automatically be considered for poster presentation.
  • The deadline for poster presentation submissions is 5:00 PM, Friday, July 31.
  • Most submitted abstracts are typically selected for posters; poster presentation details are TBD due to this year’s unique virtual format. More details on this to follow soon!