Two federal scientists affiliated with the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS) were recently recognized for their pioneering work involving machine learning for quantum control.
Jacob Taylor (left in photo) and Justyna Zwolak (right) were honored in January with a 2024 Bronze Medal Award from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The bronze medal is the highest recognition awarded by NIST, recognizing federal scientists that have achieved significant research accomplishments using creative methods.
Taylor and Zwolak were specifically cited for designing and coordinating the first ever in-situ experimental validation of fully automated calibration of semiconductor quantum dot devices, a leading candidate platform for quantum computing. Their groundbreaking work combined machine learning, computer vision, and physics-based models to enable intelligent automation of quantum experiments, initiating a whole new field within the semiconductor community that now involves multiple research groups around the world.
Taylor is a physicist at NIST and a QUICS fellow. He is a former co-director of QUICS and served from 2017–2020 as the first assistant director for quantum information science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. From 2019–2020, he founded and led the National Quantum Coordination Office (quantum.gov).
Zwolak is a mathematician at NIST and an affiliate fellow in QuICS. Her research focuses on using machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence, especially deep convolutional neural networks, in quantum computing platforms. In particular, she is investigating methods to automatically identify stable configurations of electron spins in semiconductor-based quantum computing.