9/30/2022 Maggie Knutte
Written by Maggie Knutte
The 17th annual conference on Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication and Cryptology was hosted by the Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Center (IQUIST) in July at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. With over 200 attendees, the TQC Conference adhered to its mission “to bring together the theoretical quantum information science community to present and discuss the latest advances in the field.”
The TQC Conference was comprised of 57 talks from speakers across the globe. The subject areas included Measurements & Sampling, Quantum Error Correction, Complexity Theory I, Cryptology I, Hamiltonians, Algorithms I, Quantum Machine Learning, Entanglement, Complexity Theory 2, Quantum Computation & Shannon Theory 1, Shannon Theory 2, Algorithms 2 & Estimation, Cryptography 2, Foundations, Complexity Theory 3, and Quantum Machine Learning, Algorithms, Computation. Additionally, a poster session featuring 31 posters on display, was hosted at the Siebel Center for Design. Joao Basso, Edward Farhi, Kunal Marwaha, Benjamin Villalonga and Leo Zhou were awarded the outstanding paper prize for their paper, “The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm at High Depth for MaxCut on Large-Girth Regular Graphs and the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick Model”.
Attendees were able to network in the evenings via the various excursions that were offered. These experiences included the science-based escape room “LabEscape”, a traditional Japanese ceremony known as Chado – or the way of tea – hosted at the Japan House, as well as guided tours at the Arboretum, Krannert Art Museum, and our very own, newly renovated laboratories.
The TQC Conference was made possible by the generous sponsorship of the Chicago Quantum Exchange, Foxconn, IBM, the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science, and the University of Waterloo, Institute for Quantum Computing.