Quantum computing is humanity’s bid to program nature at its most granular level. If we are successful, computing at this fundamental level may allow us to solve problems believed to be intractable for traditional computers—like simulating molecular interactions to discover new drugs and materials—sparking a scientific and industrial revolution.

A quantum computation is conceived in the mind of a scientist, metamorphoses into a sequence of instructions, and finally collapses in the cold confines of a quantum processor. In this talk, we view the rise and collapse of a quantum state through the lens of programming languages research, outlining the great opportunities we have as a field to contribute to the development of quantum computing—from high level abstractions and language design to compilation and formal verification.

Aws Albarghouthi is an associate professor of computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.He received his PhD from the University of Toronto in 2015. He works in the field of programming languages and formal methods and over the past few years he has been focused on automatically synthesizing and anlalyzing the software stack for future quantum computers. He has received several paper awards for his work, an NSF CAREER award, and multiple awards from industry.