EQUS Chief Investigator awarded Pawsey Medal 2019

Pawsey Medal awarded to Prof Steven Flammia

The medal recognises outstanding research in physics by scientists up to 10 years post-PhD and is conferred each year by the Australian Academy of Science. 

Congratulations to newly promoted Professor Steven Flammia - an EQUS Chief Investigator based at the University of Sydney - who has been awarded the 2019 Pawsey Medal by the Australian Academy of Science. 

By marrying the classical theory of compressed sensing with quantum tomography, Professor Flammia’s work has succeeded in drastically reducing the number of measurements required to learn the types of quantum states and processes commonly found in laboratory experiments aimed at building scalable quantum computers.

This work is significant as, firstly, it has had a real practical impact, with numerous experiments already performed that show the advantages of his new approach and, secondly, the methods introduced have had an impact beyond physics in the machine learning community where the idea of compressed sensing originated.

Professor Flammia’s work has impacted both theory and experimental practise in the field, with direct influence on Australian efforts in quantum technology.