Justyna Zwolak honored with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers

Dr. Justyna Zwolak was awarded the PECASE for breakthrough research combining machine learning, computer vision, and physics-based heuristics to calibrate and control quantum systems, with particular emphasis on enabling the scale-up of semiconductor quantum dot devices, a leading system for building quantum computers.

Dr. Justyna Zwolak has developed fundamental and applied advances at the intersection of machine learning and quantum information science, pushing forward both the state-of-the-art in automating challenging quantum computing experiments and providing a new foundation for high-dimensional optimization problems. Her novel use of machine learning to automate the arduous process of tuning quantum dots so that they are usable as quantum bits (“qubits”) has enabled such devices to be seriously considered as candidates technologies for creating quantum computers; the system they have created is now used around the world and in industry. It has also helped spawn a whole new subfield of physics focused on the automated control of precision experiments, whose direction Dr. Zwolak guides through convenings, lectures, and review articles.