2026 Ta-You Wu Lecture in Physics | From Prehistoric Qubits to Building a Useful Quantum Computer

This is a hybrid lecture. Join us in person at Rackham Amphitheatre (4th Floor) or via livestream: https://myumi.ch/d8Q7X

In the span of four decades, quantum computation has evolved from an intellectual curiosity to a potentially realizable technology. I will describe my thesis work on macroscopic quantum tunneling and energy-level quantization that led to the Nobel Prize, as well as several other important experiments that advanced superconducting qubits. Nevertheless, the path toward a full-stack scalable technology is a work in progress. There are significant outstanding quantum hardware, fabrication, architecture, and algorithmic challenges that must be solved. Here, we show how the road to scaling could be paved by adopting existing semiconductor technology to build much higher-quality qubits and employing system engineering approaches.