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The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has elected University of Florida computer science professor and National Medal of Technology and Innovation (NMTI) laureate Juan E. Gilbert, Ph.D. as a 2024 Academy member. The Academy, founded in 1780 by John Adams and John Hancock, elects leaders from all disciplines that work together to solve the problems that our nation faces and believes in cultivating a membership of innovators across all fields of arts and sciences.

We honor these artists, scholars, scientists, and leaders in the public, non-profit, and private sectors for their accomplishments and for the curiosity, creativity, and courage required to reach new heights, said David Oxtoby, president of the Academy. We invite these exceptional individuals to join in the Academys work to address serious challenges and advance the common good.

Gilbert joins a long list of influential members such as Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and more. His work toward pioneering a voting system that is accessible, reliable, and secure for everyone falls in line with these leaders' ideals.

At the University of Florida, we want the brightest minds tackling the hardest challenges, and thats exactly what Dr. Gilbert does, said UF President Ben Sasse. We are proud of his work and thrilled to celebrate this recognition.

Gilberts research in innovative voting technologies embodies some of the current focuses of the Academy, which are democracy, justice, science, and technology. Gilbert is joined by Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, Inc., George Clooney, and 247 talented leaders and innovators as a 2024 elected member.

We're excited to continue recognizing Dr. Gilbert's achievements as he persists in tackling the challenges of safeguarding democracy, said Forrest Masters, Ph.D., interim dean of UF's Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering. His enduring commitment in this field is forging the way forward and has shown that others are acknowledging the results his research is generating, particularly in a societal climate where transparency is crucial.

Gilbert and his Ph.D. students in his Computing for Social Good lab work daily on providing solutions to issues faced by the American public. These solutions range from innovative and accessible voting technologies with Prime III open-source voting software to deescalating tensions in routine traffic stops through video chat with Virtual Traffic Stop.

I am truly honored and humbled by this tremendous recognition of the work we do to change the world. The Academy recognizes the top people in our field, and to be named as one of them is such a huge honor, said Gilbert, who is also the Andrew Banks Family Preeminence Endowed Professor & Chair of the Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering at the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering. The work that is done in the Academy for our nation has had impact for centuries. I am so grateful for this recognition, and I am looking forward to contributing to the Academy.

Drew Brown April 25, 2024

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UF engineering professor elected to The American Academy of Arts and Sciences - University of Florida

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Students attending the opening ceremony.

The U of A Association of Computing Machinery hosted this year's HogHack, attracting 150 participants for the overnight contest on April 12 and 13. Teams of students competed for prizes and accolades by developing pieces of computer software or hardware.

The event was also sponsored by J.B. Hunt, SupplyPike, ArcBest, the McMillon Innovation Studio, Garmin and Netsmart and had over a dozen industry professionals, alumni and professors as judges.

Jack Norris, an electrical engineering and computer science student and ACM president, said, "This year, we brought in MLH (Major League Hacking) as a partner for our event. They are a nationwide non-profit that helps orchestrate hackathons at top universities throughout the nation. We decided to work with them in order to lay the groundwork for HogHacks to become one of the biggest hackathons in the region."

Norris said, "We want to give UARK students an opportunity to network with the students in the region and build awesome tech with them. While some classes at UARK give the opportunity for something similar, none do it on this scale. In addition, we provide free food and shirts to students so that they can focus simply on building something they're proud of!"

The winners of the Hoghack are the GymQuest project group, which consists of Amadeo Costaldi, Alex Prill, Charles Hinrichs, Hunter Fountain II, Benjamin Kensington and Alfonso Flores. GymQuest is an Android native app based in Kotlin using Firebase cloud services and Python API's to call Macro and Claude3. It provides the user with a custom workout routine and uses an AI storyteller to create a custom narrative experience with rewards based on "quest" completion and RPG-like stat growth.

The second-place winner was the EZ Reps group, consisting of Benjamin Edens, Caleb Smith, Eric Moises and Eduardo Tenorio. The third-place winner was the Disco Train group, consisting of Hayden Threlfall, Grace Harding, Andrew Burroughs, Josef Frankhouse and Thalia Hawkins.

Norris said, "We had 200-plussignups, nearly 180 attendees (174 participants to be exact), 30-plusprojects submitted and over $12,000 in sponsorship funds." Although it wasn't without its "bugs,"the event was a hit with students.

Several cameo awards were also given to teams. These are listed below:

MLH Best Domain Name from GoDaddy Registry

MLH Best DEI Hack Sponsored by Fidelity

MLH Best Use of Starknet

DORA by Boba Lovers

Scott Eagleson

Alvaro Garcia

Joshua Yustana

Christopher Heffernan

MLH Best Use of Kintone

MLH Sauce Labs Raffle

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ACM HogHack 2024 Results | University of Arkansas - University of Arkansas Newswire

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For the past few years, Harvard has publicly been ramping up its investment in quantum science research across the University.

In 2021, the University announced one of the first Ph.D. programs in Quantum Science and Engineering. The following year, it announced a research partnership with Amazon Web Services focused on quantum networking. Months later, in March 2023, Physics professor Mikhail Lukin whose research is focused on quantum science received a University Professorship, the highest faculty rank at the University and one of the most prestigious recognitions Harvard awards.

At the heart of Harvards rapidly burgeoning quantum research complex is the Harvard Quantum Initiative, which launched six years ago and which is at the center of Harvards expansion of research into the field.

The HQI, led by Lukin, Evelyn L. Hu, a professor of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering, and Physics professor John M. Doyle, describes itself as a community of researchers with an intense interest in advancing the science and engineering of quantum systems and their applications on its website.

We felt a new organization was needed to properly focus resources on an efficient way to launch an effective education and research program in this new intellectual area, while facilitating translation and interaction with industry, Hu wrote in an emailed statement to The Crimson on behalf of HQI.

Now, six years after the founding of HQI, Harvards quantum research has expanded dramatically, bringing with it strong new industry partnerships, cutting edge research, and even helped consolidate funding from the Department of Defense and the federal government.

When it was first founded in 2018, the HQI was a formalization of existing collaborations within the Physics department.

The reason why this even exists was that there was quite a bit of collaboration and talking to each other before, said Susanne F. Yelin, a professor of Physics in residence.

Since then, quantum researchers at Harvard have seen an increase in funding and thus a growth in the research groups, something Yelin said was really nice.

How to pay my students, it's just not my main concern anymore, and this is really nice, she said. I started with a group of something like two, three people here at Harvard, and I think right now I have about 20.

We are really lucky that there are a lot of people who are so exciting and willing to, as donors, pour a lot of money into this, she added, pointing to the construction of the HQIs new building at 60 Oxford Street, which is scheduled to be completed this spring.

Formalizing the collaboration also increases visibility of the institutes work, according to Yelin.

It also puts us on the map in the sense of Hello, we are here, we are working on quantum, she said.

Liu Mengke, a postdoc at HQI, said the creation of the HQI has benefited postdocs like her. During the annual HQI symposium, professors and postdocs come together to discuss their work, which Liu said is an opportunity for a good exposure to other PIs.

Liu said the symposium is also an opportunity for students and postdocs to get some advice from those older generations.

The HQI has also provides other opportunities for researchers to interact with experts in the field, including through a quantum information seminar series organized by Anurag Anshu, a Computer Science professor at the institute.

Indranil Halder, a postdoctoral fellow at HQI, said the featured experts are much more accessible through the seminars.

Still, Liu said there are improvements the HQI can make to better serve students.

HQI is already a good platform for us, but I think theres a lot more it can do, she said. Having a good mix or mingle together between the students from different backgrounds, maybe coffee hours, she added.

Harvard has long received federal funding for its quantum research, including from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, the Department of Defenses research branch. DARPA has coordinated research across universities with its Optimization with Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum devices, or ONISQ, program.

The ONISQ program was born out of the idea that noisy qubits, whose usefulness was believed to be limited to fundamental studies, could extend beyond to impact applications of quantum processors.

Mukund Vengalattore, the ONISQ program manager, said DARPA works towards forging a community where scientists work together collaboratively to advance achievement.

Usually the impossible happens much faster than you think it can, Vengalattore said.

In 2020, a research team led by Lukin the University Professor and HQI co-director and including collaborators from outside Harvard received a grant that would end up totaling nearly $9.5 million dollars from DARPA for work on quantum bits, the basic unit of information in quantum computing.

In classical computingalso known as traditional computingthe basic unit of information is a binary bit. It can represent zero or onetwo stateswhereas a qubit can represent any amount of states.

Last December, nearly four years later, Lukins team created the first quantum circuit with logical quantum bits an advancement toward fault-tolerant quantum computing and a significant step in reducing the computational errors which quantum computing is prone to.

According to math and theoretical science professor Arthur M. Jaffe, the work at HQI focused on quantum computing is the product of experts from several different fields working together.

Just as when biology and chemistry came together some years ago to merge into biochemistry, another merging is taking place. Physics, mathematics, and computer science are ripe to converge with the birth of new quantum mathematics which one might call quantum computer science, Jaffe wrote in an emailed statement.

Still, there are difficulties with collaborating across fields and bridging the gap between theoretical and experimental quantum science.

Liu, the postdoc, said that she is an experimentalist and while she wants to collaborate with researchers from different backgrounds, there often are challenges in communication.

Sometimes its a little hard to find a common platform so we understand each other's language, but we chat with them a lot, Liu said.We got a lot of data and we want them to help us understand, she added.

Despite the challenges, there are efforts to bridge that gap through class requirements. Liu said one solution to this is asking experimental students to take some theory classes, and theory students to take some experimental classes.

Beyond research, though, HQI also focuses on both working with industry partners and helping professors spin off their own research into private companies something that researchers say is helpful to expanding research capabilities.

In her emailed statement, Hu, the HQI co-director, wrote that we believe that translation of the knowledge into real-world applications is also very important, and its best done by bridging the cutting-edge research & education done in academic labs with leading industry players.

While Amazon is perhaps HQIs most prominent industry partner, the initiative is also working with other companies, including QuEra Computing a company Lukin co-founded that commercializes quantum computers from the research conducted at Harvard and MIT labs.

Vladan Vuleti, one of QuEras co-founders and a MIT professor, said industry partnerships like QuEra are important because they provide stability to researchers who otherwise rely on graduate students.

We might need better engineering than graduate students can provide, who stay a finite time, Vuleti said. Once quantum computing becomes feasible at a larger scale, then at some point, it probably wont be possible to be done in university labs anymore and would require dedicated people and permanent staff.

QuEra CEO Alexander Keesling also stressed the importance of having industry professionals.

Unlike a research lab that has a small number of people that are hyper focused on pushing the boundaries of understanding, here we have a mixture of physicists, engineers of different types, software engineers, electrical engineers, HE SAID

QuEra is working to expand its industry and scientific partnerships. According to Keesling, QuEra is working with the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab a federally funded lab at the University of California Berkeley , BMW, and academics working on machine learning.

But Yan Qi Huan, an HQI graduate fellow and current doctoral student, said while the investment into quantum research is important, people in the field should be careful about overhyping quantum science developments.

I think at the same time amongst some people, there's a fear of overhyping certain companies or certain releases over exaggerating the potential of quantum technologies like quantum computing, Yan said.

Vengalattore, the DARPA program manager, also emphasized the need for caution in assessing progress in the field.

We dont want to go around declaring victory in a premature manner, but victory can take many forms, Vengalattore said.

In the future, Vuleti sees academic and industry working in tandem to advance quantum computing.

I see kind of a parallel effort between something that is we take what we know, and we make it bigger and more reliable. he said. At the universities, the research goes on to find better systems, better ways of making quantum gates and reliable hardware.

As researchers and industry experts look to the future of quantum computing, Keesling emphasized the enormous progress in the quantum computing industry.

This is an incredibly exciting time for the industry, for quantum computing, he said. I can tell you that when I started my Ph.D., let alone my undergraduate, the quantum computing industry did not really exist.

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How Harvard Came to the Cutting Edge of Quantum Research | News - Harvard Crimson

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