Science Lecture Series

The Science Lecture Series at Otterbein University was established in 1987 under the leadership of Dr. Philip Barnhart, Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Dr. Jerry Jenkins, Chair of the Department of Chemistry. The George W. and Mildred K. White Science Seminar Fund sponsors the annual scientific seminars. Through these seminars, national leaders in science and technology share their insights about the future of scientific endeavor.

2022 Science Lecture Speaker: Dr. Paul Kwiat

The George W. and Mildred K. White Science Lecture Series at Otterbein University will present a free public lecture by atomic, molecular, and optical physicist Dr. Paul Kwiat. 

Title: The Quantum Information Revolution: How entanglement will — and won’t — enhance computing, communication, and sensing
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, November. 17, 2022
Where: Riley Auditorium, The Battelle Fine Arts Center, 170 W. Park St.

By now many people have probably heard about recent developments in quantum computing, teleportation, and the like. But what’s really going on, what’s hype, what’s promise, and what’s unknown? In this lecture Kwiat explains in simple terms some of the quantum “magic” we have at our disposal, why it helps, and when it probably won’t. He’ll discuss the quintessential phenomenon of quantum entanglement and, time permitting, give a brief lesson in quantum cooking.

Kwiat is the Bardeen Chair in Physics, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the inaugural Director of the Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Center (IQUIST). A Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America, he has given invited talks at numerous national and international conferences and has authored over 160 articles on various topics in quantum optics and quantum information, including several review articles. His research focuses on optical implementations of quantum information protocols, particularly using entangled—and hyperentangled—photons from parametric down-conversion. He received the Optical Society of America 2009 R. W. Wood Prize, as the primary inventor of the world’s first sources of polarization-entangled photons from down-conversion, which have been used for quantum cryptography, dense-coding, quantum teleportation, quantum metrology, and realizing optical quantum gates. Currently he leads the NASA JPL-funded Space Entanglement and Annealing Quantum Experiment (SEAQUE), which is the first US-led quantum information space project.

Dr. Paul KwiatDr. Paul Kwiat

About the George W. & Mildred K. White Science Lecture Series at Otterbein

Established in 1987, the George W. and Mildred K. White Science Lecture Series at Otterbein University sponsors annual scientific seminars that bring national leaders in science and technology to campus to share their insights about the future of scientific endeavor. Past speakers have included Dr. Robert Grubbs, 2005 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry; Dr. Tina Henkin, 2006 winner of the National Academies of Science Pfizer Prize; Dr. Steven Pinker, Harvard professor and renowned experimental psychologist; Dr. Andrea Ghez, an international expert in observational astrophysics; Dr. Sean B. Carroll, a leading voice of evolutionary science in the U.S.; animal behaviorist Dr. Steve Nowicki; and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Dr. William D. Phillips.