Location: Google AI, Santa Barbara, CA

Dates: 2018 – Present

Description: “I'm engaged in an ongoing research internship with the Google Quantum Hardware team that began along with my PhD in 2018. My work with the team has focused on experiments relating to correlated errors in quantum error correction experiments. These are important sources of error that are not correctable by leading approaches and as such have been a long-standing concern for the field. However, investigating them experimentally requires large devices with excellent performance, as these errors only begin to dominate at large scales. I’ve learned to calibrate and operate large processors and be able to use them for metrology and mitigation of these error sources, which has led to two high-profile publications with the group.”(McEwen). 

Relevance to Research: “This experience in industry has been instrumental to the success of my Ph.D. project and to my development as a scientist. The work I’ve undertaken at Google would have been difficult or impossible in an academic lab, as it requires the completion of a large effort to design, fabricate, and calibrate large processors, which currently only exist in the industry. Additionally, working in an industry group has prepared me well for future work on these subjects both in industry and in academia, where larger processors are starting to be fabricated and operated. “ -McEwen