Quantum Education and Community Building with Olivia Lanes

Alright. We are joined today by Olivia Lanes, who is the Global Lead for Education and Learning with IBM Quantum. It's great to have you with us, Olivia. How are you doing?

I'm great. Thanks for having me.

Thank you for joining us. So, yeah, if you want, Olivia, it'd be great to get a little bit of an introduction and a little bit of insight into how you ended up in the field of quantum computing.

Sure. So my background is in, experimental quantum physics. So I did my PhD at the University of Pittsburgh, and I studied quantum limited amplifiers and made a whole bunch of those for 6 years. And then when I graduated, my transition to IBM was really pretty smooth. People always ask me, you know, what was it like transitioning from academia to industry?

in Right. The labs shut down.

The labs didn't completely shut

down Restricted.

But I wasn't, being brand new Right. Like I needed personnel.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I was also on Abe's team, who was leading the education

Right.

Effort back in the day. And he said, why don't you just focus on that for a while? And I said, great. I love this stuff. That's fine. I can't go to the labs anyways. And then I just did that for a few years and worked in the lab in my, you know, free time basically. But I ended up getting promoted and really following that course instead. How I ended up here was just an accident.

That's what most people's answers boil down to.

Yeah. If you really look at it, like, this was not the plan. I'm a failed I call myself a failed astronomer. Like, that's what I wanted to do. That's what I like, that was that was the plan was I will be the next Carl Sagan and I will go study astronomy. And what happened was I did an internship, but I actually attempted to study astronomy. And I was like, oh, I don't like it. What do I do now? This is plan b.

Right. Yeah. I can't remember if it was it was either Ken Brown or Dave Bacon. 1 of the 2 of them said that they consider themselves a failed chemist. So Yeah.

You sort of have to Yeah.

Plan for serendipity in a way.

You kinda do, and I that's why I feel I always feel very self conscious when people ask me for advice, and they try to, you know, emulate my footsteps. I'm like, no. No. Don't do that. It worked once for me, and that was it. Like, you don't wanna plan to do what I did. You wanna be a lot more deliberate and smarter about it.

Yeah. And I guess in a way, that's sort of the the differentiator between, like, training and education. Right? I mean, training is is sort of a more defined, like, you need need this set of skills in order to do x, y, and z. Whereas education is like, I don't know, find a bunch of stuff out and try things and

Yeah.

You'll find if you keep applying yourself, you'll find a way to do something interesting.

Right. I think that that's a really good message too because, like, when I was in high school and undergrad, it started to become a career that you could consider doing, you know, on purpose when I was in graduate school. But when I was in high school and undergrad, like, this was not a viable career path.

No.

But now it is. And now that I go out into the world and do a lot of outreach and talk to these people who are all trying to do the field that I did but on purpose, it really has just been, like, a 180 degrees in the way that I've been thinking about it. Right. Because it really just shows how the landscape is just so different. And, I mean, I'm not that old. It hasn't been that long. You know, I graduated, like, 10 years ago, so that's not that much time in

the grand scheme of things. No. And the field changes so quickly too. I mean, you know, it's it feels like ages ago when I got involved, and it's only it's only 7 years now, really. So and so much has changed. Yeah. It's really incredible. Well, you definitely did, you are following in in Carl Sagan's footsteps in one regard, which is you're becoming much more of a a public spokesperson for the field. Yes. So so in that way, you're definitely still on that path.

I think it is very helpful, usually, like, in regards to talking about, like, education and workforce development. I think people do tend to trust what I'm saying. But I think, you know, one of the problems that all science communicators have, and Carl Sagan even had this problem, is people are like, well, are you a real researcher? Because if you're up here doing this, you can't possibly be doing real science. So why should I listen to you?

I've seen you, employ some very adept jiu jitsu on on, Twitter trolls as well, so it's very well done. I'm sure

my bosses really appreciate that.

Well, you're always I'll say it is never, it's never aggressive. It's never you're never crossing any lines. You're just sort of very gently pointing out the idiots that are coming at you. So

I want to

Always gentle.

I I always wanna teach. I never wanna come across as, you know, being a jerk, but every once in a while, I gotta stand up for myself a little bit.

Absolutely. Absolutely. You used the the the phrase workforce development, which is frankly something I hadn't encountered before getting involved in the quantum field. It makes a lot of sense because if if this is a, you know, a disruptive technology with sort of broad, impact across a number of different industries, We're gonna need people to know how to do it. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a really good question. So like you pointed out, it's really a multifaceted problem. So priorities, you know, I I work for IBM, so I guess one of my priorities has to be to make sure that we can hire people. And as a hiring manager too. Like, I wanna make sure there are people that can fulfill jobs that we're trying to hire for and that have skills to fulfill the needs that we have. I mean, that's a top priority. But, you know, it's not just for IBM.

We hope. I could make a dumb joke about using a quantum computer to solve the problem. I won't do that. But, I should say also, you mentioned Abe. Abe and I, we were you and I crossed paths at IBM for a time.

Yeah. We certainly don't want to be the only pillar of quantum education. I mean, IBM has invested a 100,000,000 over the past

5 years.

It's not a small investment. No. It's a lot. We've hired people like myself, you know, specifically to work on this. But, I mean, it doesn't have to be the case that we're the only ones. Like, we welcome other people to join us in this endeavor too because, you know, a high tide raises all ships, as they say. Is that the expression?

Something like that. I'm not a I'm not a mariner, so I can't be certain, but that sounds right.

Yes. Me neither.

Yeah. That's awesome. And, you know, you mentioned as early as middle school, we've both been involved in Q12, which is an NSF funded effort out of, I guess, UIUC and University of Chicago, initially. I guess Emily is now at Duke, so I

of lenses. People always ask me, you know, is it really necessary to talk to middle schoolers about cubits and quantum computing. I'm like, well, no. Is it necessary? No. It's not necessary. Like, they will live just fine. Yeah. It's cool. But, like, the other thing is, like, if I had to devise some sort of presentation for middle schoolers, I don't even know if I'd use the word cute like you were saying.

Exactly.

Like, that's it. It's sorta like a magic show.

Yeah.

Like, where you're like poof and then the rabbit appears and it's like, alright. I'm out. And, like, if you can just confuse them

Yes.

Because middle schoolers and high schoolers think they know everything. Right. If you can just confuse them and show them that they don't actually understand the world as much as they think, this will annoy them, and they will come back.

Right. Right.

I swear they will. Yeah.

That's sort of the nature of human curiosity is, like, I didn't get that. I'm gonna try it again.

I mean, I that could be my whole story too. Totally. Like, physics was my worst class in high school, and I was, like, annoyed that that was the one that I didn't do well on. So I was like, I better go get a PhD in that, I guess.

That's hilarious. And it does I mean, it feels like I mean, people talk about sort of the problem in STEM education as being one of, like, a bigger funnel, and especially when you talk about, you know, diversity and inclusion, a bigger funnel, but then also a less leaky as you said, all the way. Leaky pipeline. Yeah.

I mean, the funnel, to me, like, that's great, but, like, those are hollow words Yeah. Unless you fix the the leakiness issue.

Yeah.

So yeah. I mean, those conversations are all well and good, and I we have them a lot. Like, how do we fix the funnel? How do we attract more people? But the conversations I'm more interested in are, like, how do we promote the people that are already here?

Right.

Those are the more important questions, I think.

Yeah. I totally agree, and I think you're absolutely go wrong.

Exactly. Like, they should be proactive instead of reactive.

Yes. Yeah.

And I would like to see more people do that, you know, across the board. In academia and industry, it's not, you know, an isolated problem as I'm sure

we all know. No. No. Definitely. It's let's just keep our scope to STEM and and more narrowly quantum because we're not gonna fix the rest of society's problems on this one. It's only 30 minutes, Olivia. So Well,

how much time do we have left?

Okay. Like, I don't know. 12 minutes? Alright.

We'll fix all

of them. Not all of them. No. No. Alright. Climate change. No. Never mind. So, yeah. I I guess, next question I had for you, like, what do you see this is sort of going to the sort of the collaboration, side of things.

Yeah. I think so. For sure. I mean, we have made as much as we can make free and open access. Yeah.

Interesting. That's funny. We were just talking to Martin Savage from University of Washington a couple weeks ago, who did a great experiment on the IBM system over over the the Christmas holidays. Yeah. And he said that he thought that quantum information science would become more of almost a lingua franca, like a universal language for physical sciences

Mhmm.

Over time because the the toolkit as these devices get more and more capable, the toolkit's gonna be so powerful, whether you're talking about chemistry or, you know, biology even, that quantum information science will just sort of be, like, part of the standard approach to these

Yeah. I think that that's we're sort of, like, on the precipice of that right now. Like, a lot of the conversations that we're having, are, you know, how much can we abstract away and how much do I really need to learn to use this? Right. And in the past, you know, maybe even 2 or 3 years ago, I'm gonna be like, well, you're gonna have to learn some quantum physics. Sorry about that. Yeah. Good news is it's fun.

Yeah.

Don't worry. But now we're getting to the point where it's like, yeah. You should know a little bit. Like, you need to know what gates mean and it's helpful to visualize the Bloch sphere, but, like, you don't actually need to know what a transmon is

at this point. Yeah.

Yeah. You don't need to know what a superconducting qubit is. You don't actually even need to know what architecture you're using.

Right.

And that kinda blows my mind a little bit just because you don't normally see that level of abstraction, this soon

Right. When

you're building a new technology.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of I mean, I always think of we're in sort of, like, whatever the period of classical computing that roughly equates to like the 19 fifties or sixties, sort of, you know, somewhere between the transistor and the monolithic solution. We've got microprocessors, except that we also have the cloud and GPUs and open source software and all this incredibly sophisticated

tech bulb. Funny because, like, all the really sophisticated technology is actually the classical part right now. I mean, the cryogenics, that's been around for decades. Yeah. Like, it it looks cool. Don't get me wrong. And, like, we should totally use that to, like, lure people in, but it's not new. And it's really not that sophisticated. It's like a bunch of plumbing hearts. Yeah. Yeah. But it's shiny, so people are like, this is the future.

It draws the crowds. I remember the, first supercomputing conference that we brought the chandelier to, and there were more people around the IBM booth than any other booth in that show Yeah. Because it was very, very interesting looking. Okay. Cool.

Well, there's a few, you know, very boring but tangible things, which I'll mention first, which is that when you have an on premise system, you don't have to wait in line Right. To use it. Like, that is your school's dedicated system.

Right.

And if you're trying to do something, you don't have to wait in the queue. And sometimes those queues can really pile on.

Get really long.

So, you know, that's a boring answer, but that's another piece of the puzzle.

Practical, I think I would say. Yeah.

But the other piece of it is that I really do think it brings something intangible to just the vibe of the educational landscape. Like, so many of the professors, so many of the faculty that I've talked to, and the students too are just so excited about this. And that level of excitement is something that you can't buy No. And you can't just install in your class. Right.

It's really cool.

But it's not as cool as seeing it in real life and being like, I just sent my job to that machine. Yeah. And I also think being able to visualize it and, like, see all of the parts and all of the pieces Right. Brings a more fundamental understanding than you could possibly have otherwise. Because no matter how feel as cool as when you see in real life. It's just not. Yeah. It's just not. Yeah. It's just not. Yeah. It's just not. Yeah. It's just not.

Yeah.

It's just not. Yeah. It's just not. Yeah. It's just not gonna feel as cool as when you see it in real life. It's just not.

No. I saw it this morning. I can attest to the fact it looks really cool in real life.

Yeah. Oh, good. I haven't seen it yet.

Yeah. I got the VIP tour this morning.

Alright. Sebastian's a VIP. I'm not

but, yeah, I I agree with you, and I guess the other aspect I wonder about is, you know, Rensselaer is known for being, very advanced in their their HPC and their supercomputing cluster. It's sort of been, you know, a close partner of the power systems team within IBM for many years. They've done a lot of really cutting edge things here, and I wonder about having that kind of HPC culture and this on premise device, whether that sort of affords opportunities for experimenting with, you know, the the physical deployment architectures because these things are gonna live in regular data centers eventually.

Yes. I think it will definitely offer Yeah. Offer the opportunity to do that. We have, you know, another team that's very focused on the HPC thing as well. And then another thing, you know, that I'll point out is that RPI, you know, they have a strong physics and computer science department.

Yeah.

And I'm very big on the we need interdisciplinary minds to solve the problems that we have.

Yeah.

So I think it'll be really cool in terms of just recruiting and studying things that we don't normally get to think about.

Yeah. Well, and in a way, back to sort of the the training theme, like, I think the whole industry, quantum industry has been challenged by, you know, how do you get people to think in terms of these quantum information technologies enough, people from industry, so that they bring forward sort of the problem statements that can turn into use cases over time. Right?

That's the hardest part.

That's the hardest part.

Like, unfortunately, whenever I talk to clients and students are like, the hardest part is the first problem. Unfortunately, that's how it is with quantum computing. The hardest part isn't the last step Right. Like it is with a lot of technologies. The hardest part is the first step here Right. Which is identifying a good problem which could have real solutions based in quantum technology. Right. And people are like, well, how do I know where to start? I'm like, excellent question.

Wish I had a answer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So back to your point. I mean, I feel like because there's such a diversity of STEM, strengths here and this quantum resource, there's almost, you know, a breeding ground for those types of interactions that'll lead to those problem statements that can turn into real use cases.

I hope so.

And, you

know Me too. Hopefully, we can identify some more use cases as well because, you know, we know, you know, there are some in chemistry. We don't we all are aware of that. We know there are some in finance, but and crypto as well. But are there more in, you know, the biology space and the information science space Right. And, I don't know, other STEM fields I'm forgetting Sure. That we're not focused on. We haven't really been dedicating enough time and resources to because it's such a big space.

You know,

it's hard to know where to start and where to divert most of our efforts to. So, like you said, I think there's opportunity for real synergy here.

Yeah. Totally. And I mean, it's it also I mean, you said physics has been hogging the quantum. You know, the the the reality is I mean, I I like to tell people that Feynman's sort of prediction or or statement that if you wanna simulate a quantum system, you need a quantum device, that we're at that stage now. Right?

We're right on the cusp of that. Yeah. And, yeah, one way that I I've described it to people is that, you know, in a few years, all computers that are not quantum are going to be a sad approximation of a computer because physics and nature behaves quantum mechanically.

Right.

It doesn't behave classically. Right. So if you're gonna try to simulate quantum phenomena

Right.

On a computer that doesn't understand that, you're not gonna get it.

Right. Right. Right.

It'll be an approximation.

And in a way, like, I mean, physics has been hogging quantum because that's where, I mean, those are the people who are thinking in those terms day to day. But once this becomes a tool kit that you can use in other domains, it may be that we find we can map all kinds of different problems at some level to some kind of quantum simulation.

Yeah. And there are, you know, hybrid classical quantum algorithms as well. Like, I think that confuses people because they always ask me, you know, which one is gonna win classical and quantum? And I'm like, it's really that's not the right question to be asking. They're always going to play with one another.

Right.

And it's just how much are we gonna divert to each resource. Right. You know? Right. We don't know yet. But I mean, when you use a supercomputing cluster, you don't specify what rack

Right.

You send your job to. Yeah. It'll just do that automatically at some point. And at some point, you know, our software stack will be intelligent enough to be able to divert the problem to whatever hardware cluster is more aptly suited for your problem.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I don't neither is going to win.

Right. Right.

We are the

winners. Yeah. Exactly.

Exactly. Not the machines.

Not yet. Hopefully. Okay. So we've we've, we've gotten a little off off of the the main theme of training and education, but I like that because I wanted to actually swing around to almost more of a personal dimension here, which is you said you started building, quantum filters. And on the experimentalist side of things, you've had this, you know, foray into training and education. Do you see yourself getting back to experimental physics at some point?

That's a good that's a really good question. You know, I don't make a lot of predictions at this point in my life anymore is the honest answer. So I don't know exactly what the future is gonna hold, but I have to say I'm loving what I'm doing right now. And there are so many good experimental physicists in the world that I'm not worried that, like, my leaving would leave a vacuum of any kind.

Well, it would on the training and education side.

I don't wanna, like, toot my horn too much, but I do feel like that is sort of where I've found a need for right now for the specific skills that I have. Yeah. So for right now, I don't think I'm going to venture back into the lab anytime soon.

Good. We need more explainers, Olivia.

I I love explaining things.

I know.

And I think

You're very good at it.

Thank you. I think it helps that I had a technical background. I certainly don't regret getting my PhD. Right. Not that it was like all, you know, unicorns and rainbows, but I think it helped me learn to think in a way that helps me explain things

better. Awesome. Well, it it it has worked. Okay. So last question then. What are I'm gonna steal the Ezra Klein thing. What are 3 resources that you would like the listeners to go, go look up for for, you know, training learning more and taking the next steps in quantum computing.

Oh, 3 resources. Okay.

Yeah. He usually says 3 books, but that's not applicable here.

So Three books or resources. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think the first one I'd have to point out is the learning platform that we've created on the IBM Quantum site because I really do think it is a good source of information. We put a lot of work into it. It's not, like, done now. It's a living document. So if there's if you are logged on, you're like, I've already taken all of these courses. Like, don't worry. Just visit in, like, a month or 2.

Mhmm. Of

things and you're not used to thinking that way, the book is really, really great for that. And then I don't know. I might just say YouTube for the last one.

The Qiskit channel is pretty rich.

We put a lot of stuff there. I mean, I could say, like, Nielsen and Chuang, but

I did say resources. So YouTube channels definitely allowed.

You can learn so much Yeah. For free if you know where to look. The only thing, you know, I'll caution people who are online trying to create their own solo learning experiences. So make sure you're

not Yeah.

Listening to somebody who has no idea what they're

talking about. If anybody says do your own research, don't.

Yeah. That's such a loaded statement. There are so many nuances with that. It's like, you should do your own research, but you have to know how to do research first. And, oh, that takes, like, 15 years.

Yeah. Yeah. So Well, I think the Qiskit channel is a really good example of well curated content. So, I mean, anything you watch on that channel, you can at least, trust that it's fully vetted. It's coming from, people who know very well what they're talking about. That's true. I promise. Super, super useful.

There are opinions. You know, opinions are not necessarily fact

Yeah.

But I am not none of none there are no falsehoods.

Right.

Yes.

Right. Yeah. And, actually, Zlachko is still doing his Friday seminar series, I think, too. Yep. That's what actually got me thinking about doing a podcast originally.

Oh, Zlatko's seminar?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Those are really good too.

They're terrific. Yeah. Well, great. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us, Olivia.

Yeah. This was so fun.

A great conversation.