9/12/2024
Edelheit Summer Quantum Interns reflect on experience
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Edelheit Summer Quantum Interns reflect on experience
Written by Lauren Laws
Three PhD students received the Edelheit Summer Quantum Internship Award, courtesy of a donation from Dr. Lewis S. "Lonnie" Edelheit, an alumnus of the Department of Physics. The award provided $5,000 to each recipient, Haneul Kim, Kelsey Ortiz, and Louis Schatzki, to support their participation a private-sector internship in quantum science & technology over the summer.
Edelheit is a global business and technology visionary who has made key contributions to engineering advancements, including lighting, medical imaging, and computer tomography X-ray systems. For most of his career, Edelheit helped make GE an innovation leader and served in several positions during his 27 year tenure there, including Senior Vice President of Research and Development. He also spent 5 years as president and CEO of Quantum Medical Systems, a venture capital-backed company that pioneered color flow ultrasound for vascular imaging and continued in that position after Quantum was acquired by the Siemens Corporation.
Haneul "Chloe" Kim
A fifth year Ph.D student specializing in quantum information theory, Hanuel "Chloe" Kim served as a visiting scholar at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. During the program, Kim conducted theoretical research on quantum channels under the mentorship of IBM Quantum Error Correction team members Dr. John Smolin and Dr. Vikesh Siddhu. The goal? Identifying a new type of quantum channel with additive Holeyo information and zero quantum capacity.
"Solving this problem could potentially resolve long-standing conjectures in the discipline," said Kim. "Although we have not yet arrived at a definitive solution, working on this project has greatly contributed to my development as a researcher and deepened my understanding of quantum fundamentals."
The internship also allowed her to explore something new: quantum error correction, a set of techniques to protect the information stored in qubits from errors and decoherence caused by noise. Kim said she plans to continue exploring the field in the future.
Kim is advised by Dr. Eric Chitambar and Dr. Felix Leditzky.
Kelsey Ortiz
Kelsey Ortiz interned at the Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, California over the summer where her focus on quantum optics served her well. The work of the now fourth year PhD student involved advancing the corporation's entanglement testbed by characterizing multi-pixel superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) for photon number resolution. She also contributed to developing a multiline laser testbed for radio frequency photonics applications.
While unable to speak about specific details of her internship due to confidentiality, Ortiz described the experience as "immensely valuable."
"It deepened my understanding of how entanglement and quantum optics integrate into space technology, and I gained insights into other fields such as RF photonics," she said.
Besides lessons learned, Ortiz explained she also established a collaborative relationship between the lab of her advisor, Professor Paul Kwiat, and the Aerospace Corporation's quantum group, which she said she hopes will lead to future projects together.
Ortiz plans to keep exploring innovating entanglement sources for space applications, but one such project she's already helped complete will soon be headed there. Professor Paul Kwiat's lab developed an entanglement source for a payload set for space. The rocket carrying it is scheduled to launch later this year.
Louis Schatzki
Spending his summer at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights in New York, Louis Schatzki focused his internship work on quantum computing theory. The fifth year PhD student researches the intersection of quantum computing and learning theory under his advisor Dr. Eric Chitambar.
Schatzki explained his summer research was entirely theoretical.
"My work pertained to hardness of learning and communicating information in distributed quantum systems," he said. "As we continue to develop quantum technologies, understanding the capabilities and limitations of such networks will be vital in progressing."
Schatzki added that experiencing research in an industry setting was a great opportunity, something valuable as the finishing line for his studies draws near.