Events on Thursday, January 29th, 2026
- Oh, the Places Quantum Will Go!: Toward useful quantum simulation in chemistry and materials
- Time: 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
- Place: Morgridge Hall, 7th floor Seminar Room
- Speaker: Matthew Otten, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Abstract:
Chemistry and materials challenges such as corrosion, catalysis, and transition metal reactivity often come down to accurately solving strongly correlated electrons, which can exceed the practical limits of today’s best computers. Quantum computers promise a new route: represent and evolve many body quantum states directly on quantum hardware. A central question is when and for which problems this becomes useful, especially on early fault tolerant (error corrected) machines where resources remain limited. This talk gives an application-driven, end to end view of useful quantum simulation. I will describe how full stack resource estimation connects scientific targets to quantum algorithms and fault tolerant implementation, and how cross layer choices can dramatically change feasibility for realistic chemistry and materials problems. I will also emphasize the role of state of the art classical baselines in validating results, defining credible success criteria, and providing structured starting points that can reduce quantum overhead. The takeaway is a practical roadmap for identifying early targets and making claims of competitiveness testable.
This event starts at 3:30pm with refreshments, followed at 3:45pm by a short presentation by Jihyeon Park (Otten group) titled "'CANOE: Classically Assisted Non-Orthogonal Eigensolver". The invited presentation starts at 4pm.
- Host: Mark Saffman