Meet Tara, a first year PhD student, whose work focuses on Machine Learning and Quantum Technologies.
Not a day passes by where we don’t see the words ‘AI’ or ‘Quantum Computing’ online or in the news. And this is no surprise, with the huge potential of both technologies have in paving our future and changing our lives as we know it.
But what exactly gives Quantum Computers there power? What can they do what our computers now can’t? While our everyday computers use bits, that is, 1’s and 0’s, quantum computers use ‘Qubits’, which can demonstrate quantum phenomena such as superposition and entanglement. This gives quantum computers the ability to perform complex calculations that our everyday computers fail to do so.
However, building a quantum computer is a challenge, and many difficulties must be overcome before we have such powerful devices. The main problem lies in the hardware of a quantum computer, where it can be problematic to build, manipulate and perform operations on qubits. Not only this, but running a quantum computer requires many scientists working in a laboratory, tuning and calibrating the devices. To try and overcome this challenge, many ways of creating qubits are being developed, from superconductors, ions and even light rays. However, Tara research concentrates specifically on semiconductor spin quantum dots.
Tara first focuses on the simulation and modelling of such quantum dots as well as the measurements that scientists observe, with the hope of gaining insight into how these quantum dots behave and develop a deeper understanding of the underlying physics behind their behaviour. As well as this, Tara develops machine learning algorithms to measure these quantum dots, thereby decreasing the amount of time required by scientists in the laboratory, and she hopes to fasten the development of these devices so that we have quantum computers in the near future.