About spiros

Spyridon Michalakis does research on quantum many-body physics and topological quantum order at Caltech's Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, where he is also the manager for outreach activities.

Deal or no deal?

Posted on September 3, 2012 by spiros

You wouldn’t think that scientists get to travel very much, but so far I have visited every continent on Earth but one: Alaska (hmm…) Yet, even before I was a world-renowned Professor at the top university in the universe (or, as I tell my parents “postdoc at Caltech”), I had penpals (when I was half my age – my age is a power of two – the concept of penpal was still alive and strong) from places like Argentina, Cyprus, Germany and Romania (gotta love international math and sports competitions). The friends I made were often local kids that would hang out with the visiting athletes (or mathletes, depending on the nature of the competition), so the reaction I got whenever I mentioned that “Μου αρέσει το volleyball και ο στίβος, αλλά τρελαίνομαι για τα μαθηματικά!” (I love volleyball and track & field, but I am crazy about math!) was pretty uniform: “Eh?”
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Geniuses wanted

Posted on August 30, 2012 by spiros

Cousin Leonidas. He wasn’t always this angry.

Growing up in Spata (no, not Sparta – but feel free to ignore this remark) there was not much to do in the evenings. After school was done and volleyball practice was over (with my two brothers we made up half of the school team) my dad would come pick us up for a fun three hours of track and field practice. Just another lazy evening. Who am I kidding… It was exhausting! But, throwing a javelin with exuberant fury was also therapeutic (it’s a Greek thing). Yet, here lied the problem: The adrenaline high from a good five hours of sports every day would not dissipate simply because of physical exhaustion. I don’t know about my brothers, but my brain was on fire and the two pounds of pasta my mom would put on my plate (almost) every night, could not induce a strong enough food coma. Even working on the next day’s homework did not do the trick of putting me to sleep (though it did help significantly). By then, it was past midnight and I was wide awake.
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Kitaev wins $3M Physics Prize

Posted on July 31, 2012 by spiros

Alexei is thinking of putting some of the award money into education efforts. “My success is in large part due to good education, my teachers and the atmosphere of excitement in science when I grew up,” he is quoted as saying to the New York Times.

Alexei Kitaev, Professor of Physics, Computer Science, and Mathematics at Caltech, has received the Fundamental Physics Prize. This prize, which is being awarded for the first time, was established by Internet billionaire and one-time particle theorist Yuri Milner. The prize citation recognizes Kitaev’s “theoretical idea of implementing robust quantum memories and fault-tolerant quantum computation using topological quantum phases with anyons and unpaired Majorana modes.” As one of nine recipients, he will receive three million dollars.

Kitaev’s 1997 paper on Fault-tolerant quantum computation by anyons proposed exploiting exotic two-dimensional quantum states of matter for robust storage and processing of quantum information. Later, in the 2000 paper Unpaired Majorana fermions in quantum wires, he made a more concrete proposal to store quantum information robustly in suitably configured one-dimensional systems. The key insight behind both proposals is that when a quantum state is distributed non-locally among many elementary objects, it can be well protected from damage due to uncontrolled interactions with its environment. Kitaev’s ideas are now being vigorously pursued by theorists and experimentalists around the world, and in particular by researchers here at the IQIM.

Concerning the monetary value of the award, Milner explained: “I wanted to send a message that fundamental science is important, so the sum had to be significant.”

Congratulations Alexei!

An intellectual tornado

Posted on July 27, 2012 by spiros

Hello?… The first thing I remember feeling moments later was panic.

Five years before that day, I was a graduating senior at MIT pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics with Computer Science (18C for all the fellow nerds out there). I had been close to some of the most brilliant people I have ever met, like my undergraduate adviser Michael Sipser and my undergraduate research mentor in bioinformatics, Bonnie Berger. I had applied to several graduate schools to study mathematics, but had been summarily rejected by most of them. It was a humbling experience, which ultimately led me to the day I got the call. I remember clearly what day it was: February 6th, 2008. I was eating breakfast with two friends at a local diner in Davis, CA. Yes, the one place which had enthusiastically accepted me to their Ph.D. program was the Mathematics Department at UC Davis. In fact, being an international student from Greece, and given the tight State budget of California at the time (all the time), it was a miracle that UC Davis said yes. True, I had a good GPA and lots of research experience at MIT, but I did not have any direction. I did not apply to work with any particular Professor, I just applied by school name and reputation. And if it weren’t for Prof. Berger’s suggestion to apply to UC Davis, I would have applied to the top 5 graduate schools in Applied Mathematics and would be trading stocks in New York right now. I was naive.
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Hello quantum world!

Posted on July 5, 2012 by spiros

Welcome to a new blog by the licensed quantum mechanics here at IQIM, the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter at Caltech!

Caltech in bloom. Photo by Lance Hayashida.

IQIM is the newest Physics Frontiers Center supported by the National Science Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. We study physical systems in which the weirdness of the quantum world becomes manifest on macroscopic scales. Our work spans a wide range of cutting edge research, from superconductivity and nanotechnology, to exotic phases of matter and quantum computation!

We are excited to bring you firsthand accounts of the groundbreaking research taking place inside the labs of IQIM, and to answer your questions about our past, present and future work on some of the most fascinating questions at the frontiers of quantum science.

We hope you will join us on this incredible journey of discovery!