Prof Seamus Davis stands with his hands behind his back looking at the camera. He has grey hair and glasses and is wearing a blue shirt and a navy sleaveless jumper. There is a cream wall behind him with plants visible.
Prof Séamus Davis. Image: Connor McKenna/SiliconRepublic.com

Future Human podcast: From noise to quantum advantage

11 Sep 2024

In the latest episode of our Future Human: The Series podcast, we look at how the era of quantum advantage might change everything.

In our Future Human podcast series, the journalists at Silicon Republic chat to some of the leading minds about the future of everything. Hosted by Ann O’Dea, the latest episode asks how a quantum future might look, and its potential impact on key societal challenges from climate to healthcare.

In case you missed it, our first episode featured an array of leaders on the future of cybersecurity and zero trust, while episode two asked how we will travel sustainably. Episode three looked at how we regulate generative AI to ensure transparent and ethical use cases.

Episode four looked at future cities and our urban infrastructure, while episode five explored the fascinating future of food. Episode six tackled the future of work in a post-pandemic era, where AI is making its impact felt.

You can catch up on all of these and be alerted to new episodes by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts – just search ‘Future Human: The Series’.

The seventh episode on the future of quantum computing features in-depth interviews with leaders in quantum physics, quantum computing and quantum outreach. IBM’s technical ambassador outreach lead, Kate Marshall, features in this episode and the full interview with Marshall can be read here.

Séamus Davis

A leading international authority on quantum physics, Prof Séamus Davis was recently awarded the prestigious Buckley Prize in the US, recognising his ground-breaking work on the quantum microscope. It’s an award previously won by 18 Nobel Prize winners, so he is in very impressive company indeed, and the first Irish person to receive the award.

Futuristic 3D illustration of a quantum computing processor. A blue computer chip sits on a surface of colourful circles and lines.

Quantum utility: The next milestone on the road to quantum advantage

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After some 20 years in Berkley and 20 in Cornell, Prof Séamus Davis has returned to Irish shores and is based out of University College Cork (UCC) where he is professor of quantum physics, although he divides his time between there and the rest of his international team at Oxford, and he remains a professor of physics at Cornell.

Kate Marshall

Marshall is a research scientist, software engineer and the global technical ambassador lead for IBM Quantum. She studied a master’s degree in physics with policy communication and ethics of science at University College London.

Marshall worked as a software developer and DevOps engineer for three years at IBM before joining IBM Quantum as a software engineer in the Qiskit Runtime API team. In this role, she led the architecture community efforts for IBM Quantum software, implemented various new pieces of functionality in Qiskit Runtime and IBM Cloud, and supported the performance chapter in their work for demonstrating best-in-class circuit layers operation per second metrics.

She leads the Global Tech Advocates Quantum Working Group. Marshall is particularly passionate about hybrid quantum-classical computing and how both technologies will work hand-in-hand in future high performance and supercomputing environments.

Caterina Foti

Caterina Foti is a postdoctoral researcher at Aalto University in Helsinki, and outreach coordinator at quantum tech start-up Algorithmiq, a start-up with the mission to revolutionise life sciences by exploiting the potential of quantum computing to solve currently inaccessible problems.

There she co-ordinates QplayLearn, which is an online platform that aims to educate around quantum science and technologies. At Aalto University she is also part of Institute Q, which is the Finnish Quantum Institute. Foti’s dream is to “expose people from zero to 99-years old to the quantum world”.

Find out how emerging tech trends are transforming tomorrow with our new podcast, Future Human: The Series. Listen now on Spotify, on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.