Quantum Information and Quantum Computation for Chemistry: Challenges and Opportunities

The funding requested for this proposal would be to support a workshop that brings together a representative sample of the leading researchers in the field of quantum information and quantum computation to develop a new subfield of chemistry at the interface of the core of our discipline with the emerging fields. The Workshop would be held at Virginia Tech in November of 2016, from which a report would be compiled by the postdoctoral support included on the proposal budget, under the direction of the project PI, Michael Wasielewski and Co-I, Alan Aspuru-Guzik (Harvard). The Workshop will feature a small-group discussion format that can quickly distill out the most relevant connections to advancing the contribution of chemistry to quantum information and quantum computing. The Workshop will provide a state-of-the-art view of this important emerging cross-disciplinary effort, which will be widely disseminated to the public through the Workshop report as well as by the participants through their interactions with other senior investigators, postdocs and students at their home institutions and more broadly through their contacts within the scientific community. The two workshop organizers and two postdoctoral researchers based in their groups will also write a manuscript to be submitted to a high-profile journal such as Chemical Reviews as an organized record of the recent progress in the field and to discuss the opportunities lying ahead. The Workshop will encourage participation by both young and established scientists who play leading roles in these fields. Close attention will be paid to encouraging participation in the Workshop by women scientists and by scientists who are members of underrepresented minority groups. The Workshop will result in a broader effort to expand chemical education in directions that will impact information sciences and technologies.