Speaker Bio

Robert M. Szabo (Bob) is a Senior Technical Staff Member and a member the IBM Systems University Alliances team. Bob works closely with the worldwide IBM technical and sales communities to create business results.

Bob has over 30 years of experience in the field of Computer Science. He has worked seven years in the Process Control Industry, designing process control systems and configuration tools. He has also spent four years in the Communications Industry, leading the design of directory assistance operator consoles and evaluating customer requirements. He has lead design projects in the Distribution, Transportation, Education, and Healthcare & Life Sciences industries.

Bob is an IBM master inventor, co-holding 27 patents (US and China). Today he is focused on creating alliances with industry and university partners in support of the IBM Systems Development and the IBM global sales team.

Description

Though early in its development, quantum computing is now available on real hardware via the cloud through IBM Q. This radically new kind of computing holds open the possibility of solving some problems that are now and perhaps always will be intractable for “classical” computers.

In this talk, we’ll discuss the motivation for quantum computing and the types of problems to which it might be applied. We’ll describe the basics of the technology and show where we are in the timeline toward reaching quantum advantage: the point where quantum computing shows a demonstrable and significant advantage over classical computers and algorithms.

We’ll continue by describing the no-charge IBM Q Experience where more than 90,000 people have used IBM’s offerings to learn and experiment with quantum computing. Finally, we’ll discuss our most advanced program—the IBM Q Network—and give a glimpse of the new computation centers to come online over the next few years.