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Kelsea Best, a Ph.D. student in Earth and Environmental Sciences, has been awarded a graduate student pursuit grant from the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center to study the human impacts of climate change. Best is leading a team of graduate students fromseveral universities across the U.S. to study connections between climate change and displacement of people in coastal areas of the United States, with financial support for travel, high-performance computational resources and stipends provided by SESYNC.

David Curie, a third-year physics Ph.D. student, has received anOffice of Science Graduate Student Research Fellowshipto conduct part of his dissertation research in a Department of Energy laboratory. Curies work focuses on single-photon sources, which can be used inquantum communicationsand possibly quantum computing.

E. Bronson Ingram College was named the Best Higher Education/Research project for 2019 by Engineering News-Record magazine.

Brandt Eichman, William R. Kenan, Jr. Chair in Biological Sciences and professor of biochemistry, will receive the 2021 International Award from the Biochemical Society, the United Kingdoms leading organization of biochemists. The award, whichrecognizes outstanding and independent research that demonstrates the importance of the molecular biosciences, is given annually to an early- to mid-career scientist who has conducted research outside the U.K. and Ireland.

Mary Jo Gilmer, professor of nursing, has been selected for induction into the International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame by Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing. The honor, which recognizes significant, sustained international achievement, is considered one of the highest honors in nursing research.

Kathryn Humphreys, assistant professor of psychology and human development, has received a 2020 Janet Taylor Spence Award from the Association for Psychological Science. The award recognizes early-career researchers who have made transformative contributions to the field of psychological science, such as establishing new paradigms within a subject area or advancing research that cuts across fields of study.

Karan Jani, a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has been recognized as an All-Star Alumnus by Forbes for his research on black holes. Jani was named to Forbes30 Under 30Science list in 2017.

Jonathan Metzl, Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Medicine, Health and Society, has received the 2020 Benjamin Rush Award from the American Psychiatric Association. The award recognizes an individual who has made significant contributions to the literature on the history of psychiatry.

Dawool (Lauren) Nam, a senior majoring in chemistry, has received the 2019-20 Girls in STEM Scholarship Award from Girls Who STEM, the mission of which is to increase access and participation of girls in STEM fields and to promote and support girls and women in STEM projects, areas of study and professions.

Roberta Nelson, assistant director of the Office of LGBTQI Life, has received the Promising New Professional Award from the Consortium of LGBT Resource Professionals. The award recognizes a professional with less than five years of experience for outstanding service, innovative or creative effort within the profession, and demonstration of significant promise for leadership in the field.

Laura Nichols, a first-year physics Ph.D. student, has received a Computational Science Graduate Fellowship in overall support of her dissertation research in computational physics. TheCSGF fellowship, awarded to only about 30 individuals nationally per year, supports Ph.D. candidates in the computational sciencesthose who use computer programming to solve problems in scientific disciplines such as physics, biology and chemistry.

Sokrates Pantelides, William A. and Nancy F. McMinn Professor of Physics and professor of electrical engineering, was one of three international scientists honored with the 2019 Award for International Scientific Cooperation by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. A pioneer in the field of semiconductor physics, Pantelides has carried out substantive cooperation with the CAS in developing new low-dimensional materials over the past two decades. In addition, Pantelides was named an honorary professor by Galgotias University in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India, in conjunction with a talk he gave at an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers conference in nearby Lucknow.

Cleo Rucker, director of human resources consulting, employee and labor relations, has been appointed to the Metro Nashville Employee Benefits Study and Formulating Committee by Mayor John Cooper. The committees charge is to study and formulate a plan for employee benefits, including disability and retirement benefits, for Metro Nashville employees.

Keivan Stassun, Stevenson Chair in Physics and professor of astronomy and computer science, has been named an inaugural fellow of the American Astronomical Society, the major organization of professional astronomers in North America. The designation recognizes AAS members for extraordinary achievement and service, such as original research and publication, innovative contributions to astronomical techniques or instrumentation, significant contributions to education and public outreach, and noteworthy service to astronomy and to the society itself.

Steven Townsend, assistant professor of chemistry, has been named a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar for 2020. These faculty are within the first five years of their academic careers, have created an outstanding independent body of scholarship, and are deeply committed to education.

Kip Viscusi, University Distinguished Professor of Law, Economics and Management, has received the American Risk and Insurance Associations 2020 Kulp-Wright Book Award for Pricing Lives: Guideposts for a Safer Society. The award recognizes a risk management and insurance book or monograph that advances the body of knowledge toward new frontiers.

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Kudos: Read about faculty, staff and student awards, appointments and achievements - Vanderbilt University News

The CBI has called on the government to take a strategic, ambitious and expeditious approach to its policy decisions and long-term strategies to support the innovation economy.

In its Building a world-class innovation and digital economy report, the CBI warned that innovation will not realise its full potential without widespread adoption. Research highlighted in the report points to a lack of adoption of tried and tested innovation.

According to the CBI, in 2017, the proportion of UK businesses with basic digital capabilities including websites, internet trading capabilities, customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning systems were lower than the proportion of Danish businesses that had adopted them eight years earlier, in 2009.

The CBI said that this failure to adopt and diffuse innovation throughout the economy has contributed to the UKs relatively low productivity levels and has made it more challenging for some firms to adapt to changes brought about by the coronavirus.

The CBI reported that compared to other European countries, the UK ranked 16th out of 36 in terms of the adoption of product or process innovation in small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs).

As the UK leaves Europe, the government has proposed a Shared Prosperity Fund to replace the 2.1bn funding structural funding it receives from the EU, which is used to boost economic development, including support for businesses, employment and agriculture.

The CBI recommended thatthe department for business energy and industrial strategy (BEIS) and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government urgently deliver the UK Shared Prosperity Fund over the next year to support SME innovation adoption, fully replacing European funding and simplifying access.

It also recommended that BEIS deliver a bold end-to-end research and innovation strategy, including expanding Innovate UKs remit to support businesses to adopt innovation. This will help to create a systematic approach to innovation support, ensuring the UK can convert its world-leadingresearch and development (R&D) capabilities into commercial success.

Building on the need for a joined-up R&D policy, the CBI called on the government to set out a bold and systematic approach on key emerging technologies. It suggested that distributed ledger technology (DLT) should top the list as the cutting-edge innovation most set to make an impact in the next five years, along with quantum computing and augmented/virtual reality (AR /VR).

It urged policymakers to draw on the evidence and expertise of UK Research & Innovation, the Office for Science, and departmental chief scientific advisers to scan the horizon and identify the most important emerging technologies to target.

When reforming policies, the CBI suggested that the government learn from international good practice, trial new approaches and be prepared to take risks with innovation funding.

It also said policymakers should also prioritise measures that maximise private sector R&D activity and investment in the UK.

The reports authors wrote: Improving the environment for business R&D must be the central focus for government action. There are also real opportunities to redress regional economic inequality through strategic R&D investment. Investment is currently highly concentrated in certain parts of the UK with three regions accounting for 52% of gross spend.

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CBI: Government must take steps to drive SME business innovation - ComputerWeekly.com

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Quantum computing has the promise to reshape industries by unleashing computing power well beyond what traditional computers have. Logistics, pharmaceuticals and financial services all stand to benefit from applying the new technology.

JPMorgan Chase (ticker: JPM) published data last week about one of its quantum-computing experiments demonstrating the banks growing expertise in that realm. The academic-style paper is a little Byzantine, but investors should pay attention, because they will be hearing more about quantum computing from other players, including Honeywell (HON), Microsoft (MSFT) and Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL) in the near future.

In this paper, we present a novel, canonical way to produce a quantum oracle from an algebraic expression, the authors of the JPMorgan paper wrote. Thats a mouthful. Canonical, in this instance, appears to mean authoritative. And according to Microsoft, a quantum oracle is a is a black box operation that is used as input to another algorithm.

Microsofts definition only raises more questions and probably doesnt help many of the uninitiated, Barrons included. Classically, an oracle answers questions about the future. That isnt a bad analogy for quantum computing. The technology is mysterious and its power not completely understood by many peopleinvestors included.

The use of a quantum oracle, in this instance, makes doing complicated math with fibonacci numbers easier than with traditional computing systems. Fibonacci numbers form a sequence in which each number is the sum of the prior two. The sequences have applications in investing and information security, among other areas.

The Morgan team ran their experiment on the new Honeywell computer based on trapped-ion technology with quantum volume 64.

Honeywell has the hardware. And just before the JPMorgan paper was released, the industrial conglomerate announced it had created the worlds most powerful quantum computer, achieving a quantum volume of 64. Essentially, Honeywell has successfully tethered six q-bits, or quantum bits, together.

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Quantum volume is an industry term. The number 64 comes from 2 raised to the power of 6. A big reason quantum computers can do more is the q-bits can have two values at the same time. Six bits can have, essentially, 64 states at once. Quite frankly, its all a little confusing.

Today, quantum computers can still be beaten in most applications by traditional computers. But quantum power is growing. The first Wright brother flight went 600 meters, Christopher Savoie, founder and CEO of quantum computing firm Zapata Computing, said. He was explaining how to think of the current generation of quantum-computing technology. The Wright brothers flight happened in 1903 and by 1918 there were air forces around the globe.

Zapata partners with Honeywell to help develop quantum programs, applications and algorithms. Zapata helps with the software running on Honeywell hardware used by JPMorgan.

The capability of [quantum computing] is exponential, Savoie said. There is a hockey-stick-like pattern that develops as more q-bits are added to the system. It will be tough to find an area of human activity where this wont help.

It is a little mind bending. But paying attention early will give investors an edge down the road.

JPMorgan stock was down more than 2% last week, worse than the 1.9% and 1% respective gains of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 over the same span. Honeywell shares gained 0.6% last week.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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JPMorgan Shows Its Chops in Quantum Computing. Heres Why It Matters. - Barron's

Honeywell says its new quantum computer is twice as fast than any other machine.

In the race to the future of quantum computing, Honeywell has just secured a fresh lead.

The North Carolina-based conglomerate announced Thursday that it has produced the worlds fastest quantum computer, at least twice as powerful as the existing computers operated by IBM and Google.

The machine, located in a 1,500-square-foot high-security storage facility in Boulder, Colorado, consists of a stainless steel chamber about the size of basketball that is cooled by liquid helium at a temperature just above absolute zero, the point at which atoms stop vibrating. Within that chamber, individual atoms floating above a computer chip are targeted with lasers to perform calculations.

While people have studied the potential of quantum computing for decades, that is, building machines with the ability to complete calculations beyond the limits of classic computers and supercomputers, the sector has until recently been limited to the intrigue of research groups at tech companies such as IBM and Google.

But in the past year, the race between those companies to claim supremacy and provide a commercial use in the quantum race has become heated. Honeywells machine has achieved a Quantum Volume of 64, a metric devised by IBM that measures the capability of the machine and error rates, but is also difficult to decipher (and as quantum computing expert Scott Aaronson wrote in March, is potentially possible to game). By comparison, IBM announced in January that it had achieved a Quantum Volume of 32 with its newest machine, Raleigh.

Google has also spent significant resources on developing its quantum capabilities and In October said it had developed a machine that completed a calculation that would have taken a supercomputer 10,000 years to process in just 200 seconds. (IBM disputed Googles claim, saying the calculation would have taken only 2.5 days to complete.)

Honeywell has been working toward this goal for the past decade when it began developing the technology to produce cryogenics and laser tools. In the past five years, the company assembled a team of more than 100 technologists entirely dedicated to building the machine, and in March, Honeywell announced it would be within three months a goal it was able to meet even as the Covid-19 turned its workforce upside down and forced some employees to work remotely. We had to completely redesign how we work in the facilities, had to limit who was coming on the site, and put in place physical barriers, says Tony Uttley, president of Honeywell Quantum Solutions. All of that happened at the same time we were planning on being on this race.

The advancement also means that Honeywell is opening its computer to companies looking to execute their own unimaginably large calculations a service that can cost about $10,000 an hour, says Uttley. While it wont disclose how many customers it has, Honeywell did say that it has a contract with JPMorgan Chase, which has its own quantum experts who will use its machine to execute gargantuan tasks, such as building fraud detection models. For those companies without in-house quantum experts, queries can be made through intermediary quantum firms, Zapata Computing and Cambridge Quantum Computing.

With greater access to the technology, Uttley says, quantum computers are nearing the point where they have graduated from an item of fascination to being used to solve problems like climate change and pharmaceutical development. Going forward, Uttley says Honeywell plans to increase the Quantum Volume of its machine by a factor of 10 every year for the next five years, reaching a figure of 640,000 a capability far beyond that imagined ever before.

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Honeywell Says It Has Built The Worlds Most Powerful Quantum Computer - Forbes

EMERGING TECH

Lockheed Martin Ventures -- the defense companys technology startup investment arm -- has backed two companies through separate avenues announced this week.

In a release Tuesday, quantum computing company IonQ said it grew its total fundraising amount to $84 million through a new Series B round that represents its second significant round of investments since the 2015 founding with $2 million in seed money.

The latest round included Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH and Cambium, another investment firm that focuses on companies pushing future computational paradigm changes.

For Lockheed Martin Ventures, this investment gains the company an early look at a technology of increasing interest to government agencies. Two years ago, the parent corporation doubled the size of the venture fund to $200 million and sharpened the focus on five core technology areas.

College Park, Maryland-based IonQ uses what it calls a trapped-ion method for its quantum computing platforms.

IonQ raised another $20 million in 2016 from Amazon Web Services, Googles venture arm and New Enterprise Associates to build two new quantum computers. Then in 2019 came an additional $55 million in a fundraising round that saw Samsung and Mubadala Capital enter the fray along with additional backing from AWS, GV and NEA.

Separately on Wednesday, training technology firm Red 6 announced it too has received an investment from Lockheed Martin Ventures.

Terms of the funding were undisclosed but Santa Monica, California-based Red 6 will use those funds to support the further development and commercialization of its Airborne Tactical Augmented Reality System offering used to help train airplane pilots.

ATARS more specifically is designed to support synthetic training environments that seek to evaluate human performance in a multi-echelon, mixed-reality environment.

Red 6 was founded in November 2017 and conducted a feasibility demonstration with the Air Force in February 2019, the same month that a $2.5 million seed funding round closed.

The company connected with the Air Force through AFWERX, a program designed to connect startups with the service branch. Red 6 is the first AFWERX-backed company to be awarded a Small Business Innovation Research Phase III contract.

Some of Red 6s previous investors include Moonshots Capital, Starburst Accelerator and Irongate Capital Partners.

About the Author

Ross Wilkers is a senior staff writer for Washington Technology. He can be reached at rwilkers@washingtontechnology.com. Follow him on Twitter: @rosswilkers. Also find and connect with him on LinkedIn.

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Lockheed's ventures arm backs quantum computing and training tech firms - Washington Technology