The intersection of quantum information and AI is a very nascent one, ripe with opportunities. My intent in this lecture is to incite new ideas, discussions and collaborations between the quantum information and AI research communities through a few illustrative problems in quantum communications, photonic sensors, optical imaging, and photonic quantum computing, where exploiting quantum effects could lead to fundamental performance enhancements over traditional systems that do not exploit the manifest quantum properties of light and optical detection. In each of these example applications, I will discuss how mathematical tools and insights from modern AI literature could be useful---both in exploiting classical-AI tools to design better quantum photonic systems, as well as in realizing quantum-powered AI in the photonic (quantum) domain to yield fundamentally-superior performance than that is possible with a conventional photonic system that uses classical-AI in the electronic (classical) domain.
Saikat Guha is a Professor at the College of Optical Sciences, jointly appointed with the ECE Department at The University of Arizona, Tucson. He is the Director of the National Science Foundation ERC, Center for Quantum Networks. Prior to joining the University of Arizona, he was a Lead Scientist with the Quantum Information Processing group at Raytheon BBN Technologies, Cambridge, MA, where he worked from 2008 to 2017. Saikat received the B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur, India, in 2002, and the S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2004 and 2008, respectively.
Saikat's research interest is in investigating fundamental quantum-theoretic limits on photonics-based information processing, with applications to communications, imaging and computation; and in designing system realizations that can attain those performance limits. His current research focuses on quantum repeaters and network architectures for long-distance entanglement distribution, super-resolution imaging using adaptive spatial-mode sorters, entanglement-enhanced photonic sensing and communications, and quantum computing using photonic qubits.
Saikat was a co-recipient of the 2011 and 2016 Excellence in Engineering and Technology (EiET) Award, Raytheon Company's highest technical honor. He was a co-recipient of an Honorable Mention at NSA's 2015 Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition for work on covert communications. He received the 2005 Raymie Stata award from MIT for an outstanding teaching assistant, and the European Physical Society prize for his experimental work at the 29th International Physics Olympiad held in Reykjavik, 1998. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE.
Columbia affiliates may attend in person by registering. Online attendance is open to the public with registration.
The CAIT Distinguished Lecture Series seeks to promote education and learning on the state of artificial intelligence technology through lectures from both academic and industry researchers and experts. Lectures are held throughout the academic year and are open to the public.