Noisy-intermediate quantum computers have started appearing beyond the walls of the academic research labs in the commercial market. While it is still not obvious what applications they will be commercially important for, researchers from all disciplines are playing their roles to develop a deeper understanding of the field. In this talk, I would like to share what it is like to be a computer scientist in the near-term quantum computing industry. I will give examples of how computer science can help solve challenges in every layer of full stack quantum computing, from hardware design to software tool chain development, to build better quantum computers or make the best use of them. This talk will cover three areas I work on: a) development and optimization of near-term quantum algorithms, b) development of quantum programming languages, and c) optimization of atomic physics processes.
Omar Shehab received his PhD in computer science from UMBC in 2016. He joined IonQ, Inc., a University of Maryland based quantum computing startup, in 2017. His research focus is noisy-intermediate scale quantum algorithms, quantum programming language, and near-term hybrid quantum algorithm. He has been named co-inventor in eight patent applications covering different aspects of quantum computing. He has also given a number of invited talks on building quantum computers.