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The University of Michigan's Department of Physics hosts the annual Ta-You Wu Lecture, which is one of the most prestigious lecture events in our Department. The Lectureship was endowed in 1991 through generous gifts from the University of Michigan Alumni Association in Taiwan. It is named in honor of Michigan Physics alumnus and honorary Doctor of Science, Ta-You Wu, one of the central figures of the 20th century in the Chinese and Taiwanese physics communities.
This is a hybrid lecture. Join us in person
Rackham Amphitheatre (4th Floor) or
via livestream: https://myumi.ch/d8Q7X
2026 Ta-You Wu Lecture
in Physics
John Martinis, Qolab and Emeritus Professor of Physics (UC Santa Barbara)
From Prehistoric Qubits to Building a Useful Quantum Computer
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.
Speaker Information:
John M. Martinis, a 2025 Nobel Laureate in physics, is a distinguished professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the chief technology officer of Qolab. He received the Nobel Prize alongside John Clarke and Michel Devoret for their foundational 1980s experiments demonstrating that quantum-mechanical behaviors—specifically, macroscopic quantum tunneling—can occur in man-made electrical circuits. This breakthrough laid the structural groundwork for modern superconducting qubits that power today's quantum computing processors. Previously, he led the quantum hardware effort at Google, where his team achieved the historic milestone of "quantum supremacy" in 2019.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
4:00-5:00 PM
Location: Rackham Amphitheatre (4th Floor)
University of Michigan Ann Arbor Campus
Seating Begins at 3:30 PM!
This is a hybrid lecture. Join us in person or tune in via livestream:
https://myumi.ch/d8Q7X
Prior to the lecture, there will be a reception in the Assembly Hall.
The reception will begin at 3:30 p.m.
Location: Rackham Amphitheatre
University of Michigan Ann Arbor Campus
915 E. Washington Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
The Rackham Amphitheatre is located on the fourth floor of the Rackham Building. Doors to the fourth floor Rackham Amphitheatre will open at 3:30 pm for seating. Please come early as there will be no admittance after the lecture has started!
City Parking: Maynard Street Parking Structure
324 Maynard St, Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Walking Map from Maynard Street to Rackham Auditorium
Questions? Contact Carol Rabuck, crabuck@umich.edu
Previous Lectures in This Series
View an assortment of past Ta-You Wu lectures on YouTube.
- 2025 Gabriela González: Einstein, Gravitational Waves, Black Holes and Other Matters
- 2024 Hirosi Ooguri: Constraints on Quantum Gravity
- 2023 (Held in January, 2024) Jocelyn Bell Burnell: The Discovery of Pulsars
- 2022 Eiichiro Komatsu: Finding Cosmic Inflation
- 2021 Nobel laureate Klaus von Klitzing: A Nocturnal Discovery that Triggered a Revolution in International Metrology
- 2020 No lecture this year due to the Covid pandemic
- 2019 Nobel laureate Donna Strickland: Generating High-Intensity, Ultrashort Optical Pulses
- 2018 Nobel laureate F. Duncan Haldane: Topological Quantum Matter, Entanglement, and a "Second Quantum Revolution"
- 2017 Nobel laureate Kip S. Thorne: Exploring the Universe with Gravitational Waves: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
- 2016 David Spergel: Our Simple but Strange Universe
- 2015 Eric Betzig: Imaging Life at High Spatiotemporal Resolution
- 2014 Wendy Freedman: The Universe: Continuing Surprises
- 2014 Dennis Overbye: Confessions of a Dinosaur in the Age of New Media
- 2013 Nobel laureate David Wineland: Superposition, Entanglement, and Raising Schrödinger's Cat
- 2012 No lecture this year
- 2011 Gérard Mourou, Former Director of the Laboratoire d’ Optique Appliquée at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Technique Avancée & Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique (France): Laser-Based High Energy Physics
- 2010 Nobel laureate Samuel C. C. Ting: An Experiment to Explore the Mysteries of Space: The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station
- 2009 Helen Quinn: Wandering Planets, Falling Apples, Curving Spaces, Whirling Stars: How Unraveling the Mysteries of Gravity Has Taught Us About the Universe.
- 2008 Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek: The Universe is a Strange Place
- 2007 100th Birthday Celebration of the late Ta-You Wu: Distinguished Lecturer, Frank H. Shu, The Formation of Stars and Planetary Systems
- 2006 Nobel laureate Eric A. Cornell: Is Warm Glass More Sticky Than Cold Glass? Temperature and Casimir Force
- 2005 Nobel laureate Anthony J. Leggett: Does the Everyday World Really Obey Quantum Mechanics?
- 2004 Nobel laureate David J. Gross: Asymptotic Freedom and the Emergence of QCD (Or How I Won the Nobel Prize)
- 2003 Sir Martin Rees: Where is Cosmology Going?
- 2002 David Wilkinson (1935-2002): The Cosmic Microwave Backround Radiation
- 2001 Freeman Dyson: Is Life Analog or Digital?
- 2000 Nobel laureate Horst L. Stormer: Fractional Electronic Charges and other Tales from Flatland
- 1999 Nobel laureate Steven Chu: Seeing and Holding onto Atoms and Biological Molecules
- 1998 Benoit B. Mandelbrot (1924-2010): Fractals and Scale-Invariant Roughness in
the Sciences - 1997 Paul C. W. Chu: The Path of Zero Resistance
- 1996 Nobel laureate Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1932-2007): Principles of Adhesion
- 1995 Nobel laureate T. D. Lee: Symmetry and Asymmetry
- 1994 Nobel laureate Joseph Taylor: Binary Pulsars and Relativistic Gravity
- 1993 Abraham Pais (1918-2000): George Uhlenbeck Remembered
- 1992 Nobel laureate C. N. Yang: Considerations on Carbon 60
