Victor V. Albert

Nice account of someone who didn't think it was all about the CV. www.ams.org/journals/not...

Congress Is Reversing Trump’s Steep Budget Cuts to Science

Encouraging news.

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/s...

Heard many good things about these 52-chapter intro quantum mechanics notes by Robert Littlejohn. Should be useful for those interested in quantum simulation. bohr.physics.berkeley.edu/classes/221/...

Participated in my first NSF panel: wide variety of excellent proposals, from basic-science to practical. Thank you to the other panelists and program directors for upholding high standards and competitiveness!

Participants in that panel were Sofia Vallecorsa, Eleanor Rieffel, Hank Lamm, Gabe Perdue, Matthew Otten, Sarah Sheldon, Andrew Sornborger, Yigit Subasi, Thomas ladecola, Peter Orth, Norm Tubman, and Maxime Dupont.

Peter Shor and Bert de Jong hosted our discussion. We discussed ingredients for achieving the elusive practical quantum speedup. Several noted that an asymptotic polynomial speedup may not be enough since constants can prevent it from kicking in at practical parameter regimes.

Dario Gil kicks off 12 parallel roundtable discussions @fermilab.bsky.social quantum symposium by the SQMC center.

Recommendation letters for the Hartree are due on Dec. 8th. Please verify with your writers that your letters are uploaded!

Peter Shor: we haven't found many new quantum algorithms, in part, because we need larger quantum devices for testing our heuristics. He gives several examples of algorithms that were discovered computationally, including turbo codes, @fermilab.bsky.social quantum symposium by the SQMS center.

wrong link: doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

A short talk on continuous-variable (CV) codes and designs, aimed for a math audience. doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

Beyond the Geometry of Music Higgs Centre Colloquium - Dmitri Tymoczko

Music has some pretty serious underlying geometry and category theory! media.ed.ac.uk/media/Beyond...

George Laurer - Wikipedia

Error detection and correction at @umdscience.bsky.social has a long history: the guy who invented the barcode is an alum! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_...

The Fast for the Curious: How to accelerate fault-tolerant quantum applications We evaluate strategies for reducing the run time of fault-tolerant quantum computations, targeting practical utility in scientific or industrial workflows. Delivering a technology with broad impact re...

"Even for the fastest qubit modalities, such as superconducting qubits, it will be challenging to achieve the required logical clock speeds. ...in the long term, the best quantum computer may be the one that runs the fastest." arxiv.org/abs/2510.26078

QuICS Hartree fellowship application is out! A competitive and completely free-range postdoc. Anyone interested in quantum science and technology topics is encouraged to apply, preferably by Dec. 1. umd.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UMCP/j...

"Quantum hardware platforms are advancing steadily, but no one knows when quantum computers will run applications that broadly benefit society."

2025 UMD Quantum postdoc job thread.

We start with the Quantum Optics Fellowship, intended for AMO and QI. Anyone who would have applied for the JQI Fellowship should apply to this one. academicjobsonline.org/ajo/fellowsh...

Group Representation for Quantum Theory This book explains the group representation theory for quantum theory in the language of quantum theory. As is well known, group representation theory is very strong tool for quantum theory, in partic...

Impressive span of group theory here, covering Schur-Weyl, Peter-Weyl, bosonic systems, modular qudits, Galois qudits, designs, MUBs, and more. link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Every time I interact with Michel, he has some deep insight that I understand only years later. Maybe it is not completely fleshed out technically but it is always on point. It reminded me of other winners in the past. Well deserved!

Establishing a Fixed Time Period of Admission and an Extension of Stay Procedure for Nonimmigrant Academic Students, Exchange Visitors, and Representatives of Foreign Information Media Unlike most nonimmigrant classifications, which are admitted for a fixed time period, aliens in the F (academic student), J (exchange visitor), and most I (representatives of foreign information media...

A new proposal imposes significant restrictions on F-1 and J-1 visas, which would sharply curtail foreign talent flow to US grad schools. Both UMD Physics and umiacs are urging faculty to comment, so please consider. Comment period expires Sept 29. www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

Composable logical gate error in approximate quantum error correction: reexamining gate implementations in Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill codes Quantifying the accuracy of logical gates is paramount in approximate error correction, where perfect implementations are often unachievable with the available set of physical operations. To this end,...

This is interesting and surprising: some Clifford gates cannot be implemented arbitrarily well on arbitrarily good approximate GKP states with Gaussian operations!

Nice work by Brenner, Diaz and Koenig
arxiv.org/abs/2509.14658

Cat qubits (and generalizations) for the win, I guess
;-)

David Gross (Cologne) talks about SDP based quantum algorithms. Take home: hidden constants matter. Even if there is an asymptotic speedup in your favorite use case, it may still not be in the parameter regime that is relevant to the problem size you're interested in.

Nobel Prize Laureate Roger Penrose, Yvette Fuentes, and myself, request your help in order to save an archive of incredible scientific and historical value. Please raise awareness by *sharing*, or *contribute*:

www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/roger-penr...

Do you have examples? Maybe that's how I can finally learn algebraic geometry.

I had another fun opportunity to talk about our quantum formulation of the space of molecular orientations at Sorbonne University. Great workshop! Organized by Ugo Boscain, Christiane Koch, Mario Sigalotti, and Dominique Sugny. zenodo.org/records/1705...

@ox.ac.uk debate by Simon Benjamin & Bálint Koczor, host @mariaviolaris.bsky.social. Motion: "quantum computers will have a greater impact on our lives than conventional ones." Terry Rudolph, Nathan Wiebe, Elham Kashefi vs @jenseisert.bsky.social, @graemesmith.bsky.social, me. Motion defeated 94-72.

Congress wants to cut the smartest investment taxpayers ever made Virtually every smartphone on the planet runs on a chip paid for by American taxpayers — a chip that I helped invent. Now Congress is moving to cut funding for the National Science Foundation that …

"Every American taxpayer is a silent shareholder in that success. If we walk away now, we lose not just future breakthroughs but also what we have already earned." thehill.com/opinion/tech...

We are now at 999 codes. What should be our 1000th? If we pick yours, we will feature you in a post about the code.

Comment, reply, message, and spread the word.

Understanding Quantum Information and Computation This is a course on the theory of quantum computing. It consists of 16 lessons, each with a video and written component, covering the basics of quantum information, quantum algorithms (including query...

After 3 1/2 years of work my course on quantum computing is finally finished — the "Director's Cut" of Understanding Quantum Information and Computation is now available.

arxiv.org/abs/2507.11536

Thanks, you are correct.