2012 AAAS Annual Meeting took place during 16-20 February in Vancouver, Canada. It is one of the most widely recognized pan-science events, with thousands of participants and broad global media coverage. Center for Quantum Information (CQI) of Tsinghua University organized one of the symposiums entitled “Quantum Information Science and Technology: A Global Perspective”. Prof. Charles Clark, Joint Quantum Institute of NIST and the University of Maryland and Prof. Amy Yuexuan Wang, Deputy Dean of Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS) of Tsinghua University are chairs of the symposium.
Invited speakers at the symposium:
Raymond Laflamme，Ignacio Cirac，Artur Ekert，Andrew C. Yao，Charles W. Clark
The invited speakers are heads of 5 new institutes in quantum information who addressed frontier problems of research and institutional response at the symposium. They are Prof. Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, Director of Center for Quantum Information, Tsinghua University, China, Prof. Charles W. Clark，Co-Director of Joint Quantum Institute of NIST and the University of Maryland, USA, Prof. Raymond Laflamme, Director of Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo, Canada, Prof. J. Ignacio Cirac, Director of the Theory Division, the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, Germany, and Prof. Artur Ekert, Director of Center for Quantum Technologies, the National University of Singapore.
Prof. Amy Wang moderates the symposium session.
In her introductory remarks, Prof. Amy Wang said Quantum Information Science is one of the greatest achievements of contemporary Science, joining the fundamental research on Quantum Mechanics with the Information Technology at the core of our everyday life. It engages a number of disciplines, including mathematics, computer science, physics, material science, chemistry, and biology in a new interdisciplinary effort. Like the Space Race has been the exciting enterprise of the 20th century, where mankind was striving to reach the skies, today we are witnessing a “Quantum Race”, where the world’s most brilliant minds are struggling to harness the power of the microscopic world and to create the new technology of the future. She said the symposium have invited five world-leading scientists, who are not only great scientists and founders of the new field, but also great communicators.
In his talk, Prof. Andrew Yao said that quantum information is not only a Great Science, but its interdisciplinary nature goes deeply into the subject. Computer scientists are working with physicists closely in this field. Prof. Yao introduced the development of quantum research in China, and the progress at CQI in particular.
Prof. Luming Duan chairs the discussion session.
At the discussion session chaired by Prof. Luming Duan, invited speakers shared their ideas on quantum network, quantum computer and other questions with the audience.
Founded in 1848, AAAS serves some 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of one million. The non-profit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to “advance science and serve society” through initiatives in science policy; international programs; science education; and more. The Quantum Information Symposium attracted the great attention from media and was covered in Feb 25 edition of Economist.
Group photo of the symposium
From Left：Artur Ekert，Ignacio Cirac，Raymond Laflamme，Andrew C. Yao，Charles W. Clark，Amy Wang，Luming Duan，Frances Foong Yao
