The Ashtekar Frontiers of Science Lectures in the Penn State Eberly College of Science, a series of free public lectures now in its 31st year, will return to Penn State on Jan. 25.
This year’s lecture series, titled “2025: Year of Quantum,” will explore how physics at the smallest scales impacts materials, human health, computing, communications, and more. The 2025 lecture series celebrates 100 years of quantum mechanics and the UNESCO International Year of Quantum Science and Technology with six lectures on consecutive Saturdays that explore the depth and breadth of quantum research at Penn State and beyond.
Attendees of the lectures will hear from researchers on topics that include communications and privacy in the quantum era; the chemistry of quantum materials; how quantum computing could revolutionize diverse scientific disciplines; theory to help us understand the behavior of quantum gases; how quantum computers can overcome high error rates to perform accurate calculations; and how one-dimensional quantum wires called edge states may offer a solution to the problem of building networks in rapidly growing quantum computers.
The lecture series this year will be held on the Penn State University Park campus on six consecutive Saturday mornings, Jan. 25 through March 1, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in either 100 Thomas Building or 001 Chemical and Biomedical Engineering Building, as listed below. Talks will be followed by an audience question and answer session, moderated by Eberly College of Science graduate students.
This year’s speakers include:
January 25
Sascha Meinrath, Palmer Chair in Telecommunications in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State and director of X-Lab, will give a talk titled “Public interest technologists and the battle for privacy in the quantum age.”
February 1
Lukas Muechler, assistant professor of chemistry and physics, will give a talk titled “How chemistry and physics come together in quantum materials.”
February 8
Xiantao Li, professor of mathematics, will present a talk titled “What can quantum computing do for scientific computing?”
February 15
Marcos Rigol, professor of physics, will give a talk titled “A tale of two gases: Classical and quantum.”
February 22
Abhinav Kandala, principal research scientist at IBM Quantum who earned a Ph.D. in physics at Penn State in 2015, will present a talk titled “Accurate quantum computing.”
March 1
Jun Zhu, professor of physics, will present a talk titled “Building a quantum information highway network with topological edge states.”
More information about the Ashtekar Frontiers of Science Lectures is available at science.psu.edu/frontiers.
About the Ashtekar Frontiers of Science Lectures
The Penn State Lectures on the Frontiers of Science was founded by Abhay Ashtekar in 1995, soon after he arrived at Penn State as director of a new research center that subsequently evolved to become the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos. It owes its success to tireless efforts and meticulous planning by Barbara Kennedy, who presided over the series during its first 25 years, making it one of the most successful science outreach events in central Pennsylvania.