Colloquium

Many-body quantum systems are the most powerful computers allowed by Nature. How do they work? Can we control them? Are they useful? In this talk, I discuss how recent results in quantum information theory translate into quantum engineering solutions. I introduce a geometric information measure that rigorously evaluates the difference between two complex configurations of arbitrarily […]

As two basic properties of light, wavelength and timescale are central to numerous photonic applications. Compared to visible and near-infrared, the longer wavelength mid-infrared spectral regime contains unique thermal visual information and chemical fingerprints of the environment.  On a different front, femtosecond light sources and systems can enable ultrafast information processing, sensing, and computing. Yet, […]

Stable chronic mapping of brain activities at the action potential level with high temporal resolution is essential for both fundamental neuroscience research and biomedical applications, including cognitive studies, memory encoding and retrieval, and neural prostheses. Conventional neural probes can provide high spatiotemporal-resolution brain signal recordings independent of probing depth, although they generally trigger foreign body […]

Because the physical world is complex, ambiguous, and unpredictable, autonomous agents must be engineered to exhibit a human-level degree of flexibility and generality — far beyond what we are capable of explicitly programming. Achieving such rich and intricate decision making requires rethinking the foundations of intelligence across all stages of the autonomous learning lifecycle. In […]

How did scientists make sense of data before statistics and computing? This talk will explore this question by focusing on the discovery of vitamins, which occurred in the early 20th century just before the advent of modern statistical methodology. I will describe the varied practices in experimentation and reporting and highlight the sorts of insights […]