Abstract: Optimization is one of the most common learning tasks in many scientific and industrial applications. However, in many cases, these problems are so large and complex that it takes days, if not weeks, to obtain an answer even with the fastest supercomputers. Quantum computing has recently attracted a lot of attention based on its potential for accelerating specific computational tasks well beyond classical means. For instance, last year Google AI announced their achievement of quantum supremacy; they performed a computation that would take tens of thousands of years on even the fastest classical supercomputer. In this talk, I will introduce some of the basic concepts of quantum computing and focus on how we can potentially use it to solve optimization problems.

Zoom link: https://umich.zoom.us/j/93548625605 (passcode 461066) Speaker(s): Saibal De (University of Michigan)