– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

Please welcome to the stage Dr. David

Ashalam.

[Applause]

>> It's nice to see some students here

tonight.

I used to be a student

really.

But like many of you, or maybe like just

some of you, I had a lot of trouble in

my first semester in college. And it

wasn't so much the courses, but the fact

that I discovered television,

something my parents really tightly

controlled growing up. And in

particular, I was captivated by reruns

of the original Star Trek series,

led by courageous and emotional captain,

a science officer who was cerebral and

driven by logic. And I thought finally a

role model.

You know, in many ways their world

mimicked the world we live in today.

Personal communicators,

universal translators, holograms,

transporters. Well, not yet anyway.

But at the end of the day, they thrived

on uncertainty and discovery to create

opportunities for their society, the

Federation. And while I had a lot of

trouble articulating this at the time,

their somewhat rebellious take on

uncertainty was incredibly exciting to

me. It defied conventional wisdom. You

know, our brains are wired as a way to

avoid danger. We loathe ambiguity and we

often view it as a threat. But somehow,

honestly, I found uncertainty incredibly

compelling. It seemed like real

possibility.

And at the time, I really had no idea

how much uncertainty would play a role

in my own career of quantum physics at

so many different levels. You know, back

then I just appreciated the fact that

space would unfold for these Star Trek

explorers that they they just didn't

know how things would turn out. They

just appreciated the fact that that

opened up a world of possibility to them

really by not knowing.

And that series ended its run in 1969.

And that was a year where a chain of

events took place that changed the world

in so many ways and in ways we had yet

to be able to imagine.

It was here that the that the Beatles

actually held their last concert on the

roof of Apple Records in London.

The Boeing 747 had its debut flight, the

Jumbo Jet. Woodstock attracted more than

350,000 rock and roll fans to upstate

New York doing well what rock and roll

fans do.

And in July of that year, Neil Armstrong

and Buzz Aldrin became the first people

to set foot on the surface of the moon

in the Apollo 11 mission. It was an

amazing time. But towards the end of

that year, there was another event that

admittedly drew a lot less attention.

A group of scientists and engineers got

together to demonstrate the results of

their ARPA project, a project funded by

the Advanced Research Project Agency.

And their idea was to link two computers

between LA and PaloAlto. And they sat

down to demonstrate the system. They

typed Lo and the system crashed.

Not their finest moment, but about an

hour or so later, they got the thing

going again and they successfully

transmitted the first word login.

Yeah, that experiment that began in

failure changed the world in so many

ways, in ways that nobody could have

predicted at that time.

Last year, there were over 2,000,000

billion bytes of information sent over

the internet. 5 billion users online

with 25 billion connected devices, more

devices than people on the planet. And

today, in fact, 70% of our planet is

covered by some sort of mobile network.

It's amazing that that discovery at the

time changed the world in so many ways

that we couldn't perceive

even by people who worked in the field.

Take the laser. When the laser was first

proposed, leading scientists at the

time, including honestly several Nobel

laureates, said it was impossible. They

said it was impractically difficult.

Interestingly enough, when that first

scientific paper proposing the laser was

submitted, it was rejected by the

leading scientific journal of the time.

And for years afterwards, it was talked

about as a solution, desperately looking

for a problem.

But do you think that those inventors of

the time could have possibly imagined

how ubiquitous the laser is with us

today? From lasic eye surgery to

supermarket barcode scanners really, you

know, even to new tools that help us

discover the universe. The point is

uncertainty and discovery lead to

incredible opportunities.

And you know, the explorers in the Star

Trek world knew that as they explored

outer space. And today we know that more

than ever when we explore inner space.

And by inner space I mean the world of

individual atoms, electrons, photons,

single particles of light. And in that

world, nature behaves in ways we don't

experience in every day. A world in

which we have virtually no intuition.

But it's again providing extraordinary

opportunities

because in the world of inner space at

that length scale of single atoms and

electrons that we call the quantum scale

things are very very different.

In our world sort of the binary world of

information is present or absent. It's

zero or one. In the quantum world

information is an infinite combination

of zero and one a so-called

superposition.

And the value of that information

depends exactly on how and when you look

at it. It's the way the quantum world

works. But in a way, you can think about

it this going from a world of black and

white into color. There's so much

potential here. This type of dynamic.

And there's one other thing. The way you

connect these different types of quantum

bits of information is quite special.

They can be entangled with one another.

A type of quantum Facebook if you like.

Yeah. Where the act of looking at one

bit impacts them all. And here's the

twist. This happens even without a

physical connection.

We're an extraordinary moment right now

in the world of science and technology

because for the first time we're able to

create, control, and engineer this

quantum behavior, bring it to our scale,

the human scale to create fundamentally

new technologies. And much like the

laser and the internet, this is likely

to impact us in ways we can't possibly

imagine today. It's a very, very special

moment.

But

we're starting

about 15 minutes south of here at the

University of Chicago, scientists and

engineers are working together to create

incredibly interesting and highly

speculative new types of information

processing system based on quantum

technology. Individual atoms are placed

using focused lasers into big arrays,

building prototype quantum computers

that in many cases are able to solve

certain types of problems faster than

any future extrapolation of any

supercomput.

Semiconductors, the materials we all use

today in our cell phones, in our

laptops, and actually for this

presentation, people are building atomic

memories, single atom memories, where a

single atom can store a billion bits of

information.

And just to put that in a scale, in a

piece of material smaller than the grain

of sand, you can store more information

than atoms in the observable universe.

Completely redefining. What do you even

think about information in memory?

And very recently, quantum bits have

been made out of individual proteins

able to go inside living cells as

sensors, aiming to do early disease

detection. Imagine hospitals being able

to improve magnetic resonance imaging 20

orders of magnitude above what we can do

today. These things are very, very

possible and they're happening very

quickly.

And what's more, here in Illinois and in

the Midwest, we've installed hundreds of

miles of optical fiber to create

entangle quantum networks to begin to

connect quantum sensors, quantum

computers, quantum communication links,

entangling this information in very

special ways.

Things are moving really, really quickly

right now. It's an incredibly exciting

field.

But for a lot of us, it's a little bit

like we're driving 100 miles an hour in

the fog. For some of us, more than

others. We're trying to stay on the

road, and the road is being built in

front of us as we're driving. It's an

extraordinary time.

But it's pretty reasonable to ask, how

might some of us actually meet this

quantum technology? When will we see it?

How will it impact our lives? I wanted

to give you a really brief example of

this.

I'm guessing a bunch of you have been

through O'Hare.

I couldn't tell if that was happy or

sad, but okay.

I'm going with happy. So, it's likely

that you arrived on a plane. And you

might ask, how do you build an airplane?

A Boeing 787 has two and a half million

parts.

And imagine if a company knew on day one

how to build this airplane perfectly in

order. You would revolutionize

manufacturing. And quantum optimization

algorithms were able to attack problems

exactly like this. Now I'm also going to

limb and I'm going to say that I'm

guessing some of you were waiting at a

pl at a gate for your plane.

And you might think how hard is that to

get a plane to a gate?

Well, harder than you might think

because even in a say a small rural

airport, say in Iowa, where you might

have 10 gates and five planes, it's hard

to appreciate, but there are 100,000

ways to assign those planes to the

gates.

Do the math.

If you think about O'Hare, okay, with

thousands of planes and hundreds of

gates, these are problems again that

quantum optimization algorithms can help

resolve.

On a more serious note, you probably

purchased your airline ticket with a

credit card. And last year, there was

over 12 billion dollars of consumer

fraud

and over a quarter of a billion credit

cards compromised. Quantum encryption is

incredibly promising as a way to secure

our information and make it hackproof.

And finally, you want to reach your

destination safely. And this year alone,

there have been over 1500 spoofing

attacks on GPS for pilot navigation,

trying to confuse pilots, trying to

determine their destinations and flight

paths. Onboard quantum sensing is likely

to help alleviate these issues. The

point is, from transportation to

healthcare to business, quantum

technologies are likely to impact all of

us. The real question is, can we do it?

This is a once in a generation moment

for Chicago to become global leaders in

this rapidly emerging area of quantum

science and engineering. Can we do this?

I think we can. Chicago, after all, is a

city that reversed the flow of rivers.

It built the first skyscraper. It is the

city of big shoulders. But no, make no

mistake. This is going to be very hard.

We have to come up with new ways of

working together, new ways to develop

education, be prepared for applications

with very little notice, and to surmount

problems that we can't foresee.

But the fact is, we've already begun. A

few years ago, the United States passed

the National Quantum Initiative Act,

authorizing 10 national centers to

launch collaborations to move this

science into technology and the

marketplace. And after a massive

competition across the country, four of

the 10 national centers have been placed

here in Illinois,

which is a measure of how well this

region collaborates. And the state has

been an extraordinary partner, putting

hundreds of millions of dollars into

building new labs here in Chicago to

translate discovery to society and to

launch the Illinois Quantum and Micro

Electronics Park, the largest state

effort in the country to build quantum

manufacturing. And interestingly enough,

it's at the old US Steel site.

Amazing. From steel to quantum, you

know, thinking big to think very small.

Not surprisingly, we're not alone. If

you stand back, this is a global

competition. This color-coded map gives

you a sense of countries around the

world that have launched national

quantum programs. And for those of you

with very good eyes, like really good

eyes, you might notice that Illinois's

investment is comparable to seven

several countries.

We're a player in this game and it's a

remarkable moment. And while we have

great universities for research and we

have great national labs in Illinois,

Illinois has one other significant

advantage in the country. We have one of

the largest community college systems in

the nation.

And you might ask, why is that

important? Because the next decade, it's

expected there'll be over 800,000 jobs

created to build the most critical

aspect of this, a legion of quantum

engineers.

Where will we get quantum engineers? We

have to train them. 200,000 of those

people are projected to be here in the

Midwest. And why is the community

college system so important? It's

important because 70% of these quantum

jobs are for people with associate

degrees, high school degrees, and

undergraduate degrees.

[Applause]

And this one company executive said to

me not so long ago, you know, David, the

last thing we need is more people like

you.

Again, really,

not the nicest person,

but he makes a point. This is incredibly

important for us. And if we stand back

and we look at the history of other once

in a generation changes in technology,

global collaboration is incredibly

important. You know, Mark Twain famously

wrote, "History doesn't repeat itself,

but it often rhymes."

And working globally, we need to attract

the best and brightest people here into

Chicago, into the Midwest. We need to

nurture them, help them develop

companies, bring new ideas. This is

important not just for Chicago and the

Midwest. It's important for us to

maintain global leadership in this area

and set global standards for quantum

technology.

You know, when I think back about my

freshman years in college,

at least some of my freshman year in

college,

I realized that uh you know, in many

ways, our world is so much more

connected than the world of those Star

Trek explorers

in ways that even science fiction areas

like teleportation are now a reality.

Now, while we're not able to teleport

people or large objects, we are able to

teleport atomic information over hundred

of miles without physical connections,

creating a goal of global quantum

entanglement to share information around

the planet. It's a remarkable time on

the precipice of this new technology.

Here we are at such an exciting time in

history. We're ready as a city to work

together with so many questions, but the

one thing I know for sure is here in

Chicago, working together, we can boldly

go where no one has gone before.

Thank you.

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
students /ˈstuːdənts/ A1	noun - a person who is studying at a school or college
college /ˈkɒlɪdʒ/ A2	noun - an educational institution or establishment
trouble /ˈtrʌbl/ A2	noun - difficulty or problems
series /ˈsɪəriːz/ B1	noun - a set of related things or events arranged or happening in a definite order
captain /ˈkæptɪn/ B1	noun - the person in command of a ship, aircraft, or spacecraft
science /ˈsaɪəns/ A2	noun - the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
model /ˈmɒdl/ B1	noun - a thing used as an example to follow or imitate.
uncertainty /ʌnˈsɜːtnti/ B2	noun - the state of being uncertain
discovery /dɪˈskʌvəri/ B1	noun - the act of finding something unexpectedly or while looking for something else
opportunity /ˌɒpəˈtjuːnəti/ B1	noun - a set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something
compelling /kəmˈpelɪŋ/ C1	adjective - evoking interest, attention, or admiration in a powerfully irresistible way
quantum /ˈkwɒntəm/ C1	adjective - relating to quantum theory
technology /tekˈnɒlədʒi/ B1	noun - the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry
engineer /ˌendʒɪˈnɪər/ B1	noun - a person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or structures. verb - design and build (a machine or structure).
global /ˈɡləʊbl/ B2	adjective - relating to the whole world; worldwide
initiative /ɪˈnɪʃətɪv/ B2	noun - the ability to assess and initiate things independently