��ݮ��Ƶ News - Next Generation Computing

Technological Futures

��ݮ��Ƶ researchers make a significant step towards reliably processing quantum information

Ryon Jones — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 19:48:20 +0000

New optical system designed to target and control individual atoms

Using laser light, researchers have developed the most robust method currently known to control individual qubits made of the chemical element barium. The ability to reliably control a qubit is an important achievement for realizing future functional quantum computers.

This new method, developed at the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ’s Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC), uses a small glass waveguide to separate laser beams and focus them four microns apart, about four-hundredths of the width of a single human hair. The precision and extent to which each focused laser beam on its target qubit can be controlled in parallel is unmatched by previous research.

“Our design limits the amount of crosstalk–the amount of light falling on neighbouring ions–to the very small relative intensity of 0.01 per cent, which is among the best in the quantum community,” said Dr. K. Rajibul Islam, a professor at IQC and ��ݮ��Ƶ’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. “Unlike previous methods to create agile controls over individual ions, the fibre-based modulators do not affect each other.

“This means we can talk to any ion without affecting its neighbours while also retaining the capability to control each individual ion to the maximum possible extent. This is the most flexible ion qubit control system with this high precision that we know of anywhere, in both academia and industry.”

The researchers targeted barium ions, which are becoming increasingly popular in the field of trapped ion quantum computation. Barium ions have convenient energy states that can be used as the zero and one levels of a qubit and be manipulated with visible green light, unlike the higher energy ultraviolet light needed for other atom types for the same manipulation. This allows the researchers to use commercially available optical technologies that are not available for ultraviolet wavelengths.

The researchers created a waveguide chip that divides a single laser beam into 16 different channels of light. Each channel is then directed into individual optical fibre-based modulators which independently provide agile control over each laser beam’s intensity, frequency, and phase. The laser beams are then focused down to their small spacing using a series of optical lenses similar to a telescope. The researchers confirmed each laser beam’s focus and control by measuring them with precise camera sensors.

“This work is part of our effort at the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ to build barium ion quantum processors using atomic systems,” said Dr. Crystal Senko, Islam’s co-principal investigator and a faculty member at IQC and ��ݮ��Ƶ’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. “We use ions because they are identical, nature-made qubits, so we don’t need to fabricate them. Our task is to find ways to control them.”

The new waveguide method demonstrates a simple and precise method of control, showing promise for manipulating ions to encode and process quantum data and for implementation in quantum simulation and computing.

The paper, A guided light system for agile individual addressing of Ba+ qubits with 10⁻⁴ level intensity crosstalk, was published by Ali Binai-Motlagh, Dr. Matt Day, Nikolay Videnov, Noah Greenberg, Senko and Islam in Quantum Science and Technology.

Science

Technological Futures

Integrative teaching in high school

Jude Okonkwo — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 14:59:53 +0000

Project LEO turns Riverview Highschool students into creators by combining arts and science.

Humans throughout history have dreamed of reaching out and touching the stars. Thanks to a unique collaboration with the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ, Students at Riverview Highschool in New Brunswick can do just that — with a little help from a ladder.

Project LEO, standing for Light Embodied Odyssey, and named after the constellation, is a suspended columnar interactive light sculpture that responds to movement.

Students at Riverview have been learning remotely from Rob Gorbet, associate professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ and his brother Matt, a partner in Gorbet Design, about science, electronics, coding, emotion, and form. They have applied it all by creating LEO, a hands-on project that incorporates all these elements of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM).

Gorbet is working with Riverview’s award-winning science teacher Ian Fogarty to help his high school students use interdisciplinary knowledge to make connections across their courses by engaging in an interactive design project.

“Students mention the feeling of empowerment they get from making a thing and putting it out in the world,” says Gorbet. “After being involved, they have talked about seeing themselves and their interests in more connected, higher-dimensional ways.”

Right to Left: Prof. Rob Gorbet and his brother Matt, a partner in Gorbet Design

Gorbet’s goal as a Knowledge Integration (KI) professor is to challenge both students and the school system to rethink the labels they put on themselves. LEO is one example of how integrative projects might change how schools teach by helping advance cognitive development and critical thinking skills by encouraging synthesis of ideas. The project, displayed in Riverview's main entrance, serves as a catalyst for conversation and brings different social groups together to encourage discussions about art, science, and education.

The project started in 2020-21, with the first cohort using the form language and electronics from ��ݮ��Ƶ’s Living Architecture Systems Group to construct the first column. They focussed primarily on designing the light behaviours to represent different human emotions. In the 2021-22 school year two more columns were designed by students. This time they focussed on fabrication technology and sculptural aspects to design and make their own science-inspired forms for the columns.

Project LEO Installation at Riverview Highschool in New Brunswick

With more columns still to build, the project will continue for another few years. The students’ imaginations are boundless: might future iterations be able to read and respond to human emotions by using a camera and Artificial Intelligence (AI)? How might the sculpture reflect the environment, for example the tides in the nearby Bay of Fundy? As they are completed, each column of the project is raised in specific relation to the others to represent the constellation LEO, a tribute to the school’s lion mascot, and to the students’ ideas and efforts coming together to spawn a whole new creation.

Hopefully, this project will open the door for incoming and outgoing students to come up with more involved innovative ideas that will change the way they think of themselves and the world around them.

Learn more about project LEO: https://livingarchitecturesystems.com/project/riverview-column/

Learn more about the LASG: https://livingarchitecturesystems.com/about

More about Knowledge Integration: /future-students/programs/knowledge-integration

Environment

Community

Talent

The next big computing evolution

Victoria Lumax — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 05:00:00 +0000

Researcher Christine Muschik thinks outside the box with quantum computing innovations

Christine Muschik
Professor, Faculty of Science
> Institute of Quantum Computing
> Perimeter Institute

Computing evolutions of the past few decades have already taken us from floppy discs to an era of almost instantaneous communication in an internet-connected world.

But quantum computers promise “an even bigger transformation,” says Christine Muschik, a physics and astronomy professor and member of the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ’s Institute for Quantum Computing.

“You could simulate, for instance, new materials,” Muschik says. “You could develop better fertilizers. You could come up with new ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. You could design new drugs.”

These are examples of what she calls “interesting problems” that quantum computers could be used for.

The quantum superpower found in nature

Even the present-day supercomputers have their limits. They process information in the form of zeros or ones, one line at a time. This means that no matter how big or how powerful they are, some simulations are so complex they can’t be done with classical computers.

But nature has an amazing computing superpower. It is called superposition, whereby information can be grasped in more than one state at the same time. (For example, the spin of a particle can be up and down at the same time.) “The classical computer runs out of steam and out of memory in keeping track of all the combinations, but nature does it effortlessly,” Muschik says.

Being able to build computers to harness this quantum superpower is a long-standing dream of physicists. Even 40 years ago, long before quantum computers were a possibility, the famous physicist Richard Feynman said “nature isn't classical … if you want to make a simulation of nature, you'd better make it quantum mechanical.”

That’s what Muschik is working on. She wants quantum computers that can solve interesting problems, such as simulating quantum interactions, biochemical interactions, processes inside a neutron star or the early moments of the universe.

New methods of scientific computing

The technology is getting there. In 2019, Google scientists announced they had achieved “quantum supremacy” by solving a problem on a quantum computer that a classical computer could not solve. But it was a very narrow, specific problem. Getting a quantum computer to do something more complex is difficult.

Muschik explains that in regular computers, there is a lot of error correction going on, as the bits of ones and zeros are being processed using the gates on a computer chip. In a quantum computer, correcting errors is possible in principle, but still technically challenging. The experimental quantum computers that exist today are not error-corrected and mistakes get through. “If I have too many quantum gates in my quantum circuit, then so much error accumulates that we see only noise in the computation,” she says.

To solve this problem, Muschik is thinking outside the box. She is reimagining what computing itself could look like. “We are coming up with new methods for scientific computing,” she says.

Muschik is internationally recognized for her creative research. She received a 2019 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in Physics, given to early-career scientists of outstanding promise. She is still one of few women in the field, although she says women are getting much more support now.

Combining classical and quantum computing

Muschik’s group has achieved some remarkable successes. Most recently, they performed the first-ever simulation of baryons — the particles that make up the matter that surrounds us — on a quantum computer.

To achieve this, the group used hybrid computing whereby a classical and a quantum computer are tied together in a kind of feedback loop. The classical computer can be tasked with parts of a problem that it can do easily, and then the quantum computer can take over to do the parts that are too complicated. They pass the problem back and forth to solve it in a resource-efficient way.

“Instead of replacing the existing infrastructure, we can integrate the quantum computer into the existing infrastructure and complement it,” Muschik says.

Continuing quantum computing research

Muschik’s group has also been working on a completely new method to get around the extremely error-prone quantum gates in hybrid computing. When particles are entangled, the state (such as the spin value) of one particle in the pair can change instantly when a measurement is made on the other particle. Her group has shown that it is possible to do hybrid computing as a series of measurements on these quantum states and then use measurements to do the calculation, without the need for quantum gates.

“The algorithms to do this look really strange because it's a completely different computing concept, but we have shown that it works,” Muschik says. Next, she hopes to team up with an experimental group to further develop this new measurement approach.

“What is very interesting about this field is that there are is so much unexplored territory. There is a lot of room for true innovation and space for new ideas,” she says.

Science

Global Impact

Privacy and cybersecurity can foster 21st Century democracy

Victoria Lumax — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 05:00:00 +0000

Canada Research Chair Ian Goldberg sees privacy as a precondition for freedom, dignity and autonomy

Ian Goldberg (BMath ’95)
Professor, Faculty of Math
Cheriton School of Computer Science
> Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute
> Canada Research Chair in Privacy Enhancing Technologies

When people think about privacy in digital spaces, many think about things like protecting their credit card information.

But for cybersecurity researcher Ian Goldberg, privacy is a much more expansive concept, one that is intertwined with the possibilities for individual flourishing and the practice of democracy in a digital age.

Goldberg is the Canada Research Chair in Privacy Enhancing Technologies and a professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science. His research and innovation in cybersecurity and privacy have made him a giant in the field.

Along with his academic appointments, Goldberg was chair of the board of directors for one of the best-known and most widely used cybersecurity programs: the original Tor Project and its famous onion browser.

“Privacy is a much broader concept than just keeping information secret,” he says. “Privacy is about freedom, dignity and autonomy, some of the core ideals of democratic societies.”

Cybersecurity is about more than protecting personal information

As Goldberg points out, cybersecurity has evolved in such a way that protecting specific information such as credit cards or personal data is not necessarily the biggest concern.

“We’re actually quite good at protecting the content of the information that is transferred across the internet,” he says. “What we are less good at is protecting the metadata, which is the information about who is communicating, how long they communicate or who they communicate with.

“And it turns out you can learn a lot about individuals or companies or even government organizations just by knowing who is communicating with who. All this metadata is information that can be gathered as a consequence of the technologies we use.”

Examples of this kind of metadata relevant to the public include location data that a smartphone may record, or a list of the websites or social accounts a user may visit or follow. Companies collect and analyze such metadata and may then use it to direct users to specific kinds of content or products.

An issue of democracy when algorithms create echo chambers

This amounts to a form of “social sorting” and puts limits on the possibilities for an individual, in the sense that users are purposefully directed to some specific content rather than having an authentic choice.

It becomes an issue of democracy when algorithms create an echo chamber for political discourse or provide only certain conduits for political information. It becomes even more serious when that social sorting acts as a form of censorship.

“People need to be able to make decisions and discover themselves, especially youth,” Goldberg says. “Think about those from equity-deserving groups, such as LGBTQ+ youth. They need to be able to discover both themselves and their communities without having all their actions observed and monitored, especially if they live in a place where being queer is illegal, for example.

“Going a step beyond that, privacy is important as a society because we need people to be able to step out of bounds,” he adds. “The set of laws and social norms we have today are not the best set. It would be hubris to think they are. We need it to be the case that people can violate social norms in order that those social norms can change.”

In this sense, Goldberg understands cybersecurity and privacy as an issue that is central to the practice of democracy in a digital age. Digital spaces must be free and allow people to discover, collaborate and build productive relationships for 21st Century democracy to thrive. Privacy is the means to make those digital spaces free.

Privacy and cybersecurity at ��ݮ��Ƶ

Goldberg’s work in cybersecurity and privacy is supported by several initiatives at the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ, which he sees as a hub for innovations in privacy. He is a member of the Cryptography, Security and Privacy group and the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute (CPI). Recently, he has been working on a new interdisciplinary research and teaching program through CPI.

“CPI has brought together interdisciplinary researchers from all across campus,” he says. “This kind of infrastructure creates a nexus for different kinds of privacy-related work. ��ݮ��Ƶ has a tradition of research on the technical side in cryptography, security and privacy that brought together math and computer science and engineering. Now in CPI we bring together researchers in social sciences and humanities as well. It’s an exciting development and already bringing new insights.”

Global Impact

Optimizing operating room efficiency

Victoria Lumax — Thu, 06 Jan 2022 05:00:00 +0000

Using machine learning to address the backlog of surgeries caused by COVID-19

Natasha Rozario
Student, Faculty of Mathematics
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science

For Natasha Rozario, going to the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ wasn’t just an opportunity to study and complete a degree. It was a chance to do research with a social purpose and to help create a better world.

As an undergraduate Computer Science student, Rozario felt called to help address the backlog of surgeries that had piled up because of the COVID-19 pandemic, when so many elective operations were cancelled due to pressure on the healthcare system. In 2020, she created an innovative program based on a machine learning algorithm to optimize operating room efficiency and get more people access to life-changing or life-saving surgeries.

“There are a lot of applications for this kind of research,” Rozario says. “Especially in a hospital where everything is based on information systems, there’s a lot of room for optimization.”

Using historical data from Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital, she found that by optimizing operating room bookings, nursing overtime would have been cut by 21 per cent. That would have saved the hospital $469,000 over three years. Her findings were published in the Canadian Journal of Surgery.

Although Rozario is intrinsically motivated and the very definition of a go-getter, she also concedes that a big part of being able to contribute as a researcher is to have had doors opened for her and to be supported by ��ݮ��Ƶ. Even before she started her undergraduate program, these supports were already happening.

Inspired by tech for social good

“One summer in high school, I attended a catalyst summer engineering program hosted by the University,” Rozario says. “I think that was my first experience identifying real-world problems and trying to leverage technology to find solutions. Even back then, being surrounded by people from the University who were so hungry for change and innovation, I think it instilled within me this drive to succeed.”

When Rozario did take up her undergraduate studies, it was then a natural transition into computer science course work and to joining some of the clubs and student societies that allowed her to further develop her skills. In her first year, she joined the Coffee and Code Club, a semester-long workshop series, where she learned the rudiments of machine learning by building a bot to detect cyberbullying on social media platforms.

By the time she was in her second year, the star student began working and publishing with fully-fledged researchers. In her current research on optimizing operating room efficiency, Rozario says she has been supported by several faculty members — including some from outside Computer Science.

“I talked to Jason Bell, a professor in pure math, who was teaching me combinatorics and optimization at the time,” she says. “And we were talking about how one might do this mathematically. The reason the project ended up pivoting to machine learning is because it’s so optimized for identifying patterns in large amounts of data, but I definitely would not have gone there without taking the math approach in the first place.”

Along with the academic and research side of her career at ��ݮ��Ƶ, Rozario is also keen to contribute to the business world, and specifically in businesses with a social purpose. She points to the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship that is fundamental to the Cheriton School of Computer Science and the way the entire program is essentially plugged into the ��ݮ��Ƶ tech startup scene.

Rozario says she sees so many avenues open for her future.

“I think graduate school is an option because there’s so much I want to learn. But I also want to keep working in medtech, at the intersection of health care and computer science. I think that’s really where my future is, and I think it’s somewhere I can contribute. There’s a lot of untapped potential there.”

Global Impact

Finding ways to stay connected and protected

Adriann Kennedy — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 22:49:34 +0000

Supporting safer cybersecurity decisions and a privacy-conscious mindset for industry leaders and others grappling with pandemic stress

As the pandemic drove people online to work, study and connect with loved ones, Leah Zhang-Kennedy doubled down on her commitment to making digital spaces safer for everyone.

Leah Zhang-Kennedy
Professor, Faculty of Arts
> Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business
> ��ݮ��Ƶ Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute

“We are at a very critical crossroad right now. New and emerging technologies that rely heavily on our private information are becoming more ubiquitous,” says Zhang-Kennedy, a professor at ��ݮ��Ƶ’s Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business. “The seamless convenience of these tools poses significant security concerns.”

With expertise spanning computer science, human-computer interaction and user experience (UX), Zhang-Kennedy says: “Online privacy is not just a matter of law and policy. It's a matter of ethics and doing what's right. Designers need to a have a sense of responsibility to use their skills for good.”

In 2020, about 57 per cent of Canadian internet users reported experiencing some form of privacy breach, according to Statistics Canada. Breaches included being redirected to fraudulent websites that steal personal information or trigger malware attacks. “We know that during this pandemic crisis, when everybody feels a lot of stress, people tend to make poor cybersecurity decisions.”

Zhang-Kennedy flags the pandemic response itself as a potential vulnerability. “COVID-19 contact tracing apps could allow for unprecedented surveillance — it’s always risky to create a tool that enables this type of large-scale population data collection,” she says.

Zhang-Kennedy’s work is focused on two related areas: improving cybersecurity practices among users and promoting secure, usable, engaging security and privacy technology design.

Connecting schools and non-profits to cybersecurity educational tools

Safe cybersecurity behaviours need to start at a very young age if we are to have a society of responsible digital citizens, says Zhang-Kennedy, who has created two interactive educational tools to boost online safety habits.

Cyberheroes introduces children younger than 10 to online privacy concepts and practices, including protecting personal information, combating cyber bullying and avoiding interaction with strangers.

Secure Comics targets non-technical audiences of all ages to improve their understanding of computer security and privacy, including revealing how hackers can easily access personal information or unleash malware attacks.

Both tools are highly visual and interactive, employing principles of persuasive technology, a design intended to change attitudes and behaviours. Secure Comics is available as curriculum resources for Canadian teachers through MediaSmarts, a digital literacy non-profit organization.

“It's really about empowering young children to be able to assess an online situation and educating caregivers and teachers about cybersecurity is part of the process,” Zhang-Kennedy says.

Connecting designers to scientific, technology and industry knowledge

Zhang-Kennedy is also deeply focused on privacy-conscious design, which incorporates privacy considerations into the development process. She stresses that combining scientific and technical knowledge across disciplines and outside academia is an essential part of the work.

“Designers need to stop thinking about privacy as someone else’s responsibility or as a complicated technical or legal problem that is beyond their role,” Zhang-Kennedy says.

Privacy design also depends on buy-in from organizational stakeholders, she adds. “Corporate leaders and management need to adopt a privacy-conscious mindset.” The Stratford School’s corporate partnerships, which often sponsor specific class projects, is one avenue for influencing this mindset within industries.

Think Privacy Design Jam

To build greater capacity for privacy design, Zhang-Kennedy received funding from the ��ݮ��Ƶ Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute (CPI) to lead the Think Privacy Design Jam, a virtual event in the fall of 2020 with cybersecurity and UX experts from universities and industry partners including Rogers Communications and BlackBerry.

Non-profit partners such as MediaSmarts, Knowledgeflow and the Cybersafety Foundation also joined more than 50 students from ��ݮ��Ƶ’s faculties of Arts, Engineering and Mathematics. The winning teams successfully adapted the Privacy by Design framework in their solutions.

Clubhouse is a secure, online community platform for students to meet and interact with like-minded friends in an after-school club setting which is supervised by teachers. Bondfire is a real-time interactive platform for isolated college students that builds meaningful connections through the power of storytelling. Secretum is an open-source, decentralized social media platform that makes digital activism safe and sustainable for everyone.

Zhang-Kennedy was happy with the outcome of the Jam. “I think it's really about empowering the students to own their authority as privacy-conscious professionals after they graduate.”

Arts

Community

Entrepreneurship

Paying it forward for the next-generation of women in computing

Adriann Kennedy — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 22:46:57 +0000

��ݮ��Ƶ Computer Science student dreams of being a tech leader and building bridges for marginalized groups in tech

Keer Liu
Student, Faculty of Mathematics
> David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
> Velocity
> 2019 Co-op Student of the Year (Mathematics)

Keer Liu was 18 years old when she left China to study computer science at the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ with a dream of becoming a leader in the tech industry. She wanted an exceptional foundation in computing but her real dream has always been to lead.

This year, Liu will have an undergraduate degree in Computer Science, experience building a successful startup with her classmates, and six co-op work terms at some of the world’s best-known technology companies.

Working in companies such as Apple, Uber, Slack and Coinbase transformed her education, but Liu says the connections she made — and the female role models she met — while working in an industry still dominated by men have inspired her to not only lead but to build bridges for other young women in computing.

“I was able to get a co-op term with Apple on the basis of a recommendation from my supervisor at Slack,” Liu says, who starts full-time at Apple after graduating. The recommendation came from a female engineering colleague. Liu says the experience of reporting to three women during co-op terms in San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver shaped her vision of leadership.

“Female software engineers and managers have empathy for younger women just entering the field,” Liu says. “They have the engineering skills but they also know how to mentor young students like me. I want to be able to do that for others.”

The power of a network of women in tech

For Liu, the power of connection and community started early in her studies when she became involved in the Women in Computer Science group in ��ݮ��Ƶ’s Faculty of Mathematics. There she was introduced to other women studying computer science who shared their own stories of experiencing unconscious bias, feeling like imposters in the workplace, and the fear of speaking up in meetings. Liu, who speaks three languages, said she had to push herself to be more assertive, in part because she was a woman, but also because English is her third language.

According to Statistics Canada, only 18 per cent of people working in engineering or computer and information systems jobs are women. In the U.S., software developers, with a median annual wage of $103,000, continue to be in high demand but only 18 per cent of those jobs were filled by women in 2017.

The disparity persists despite research that shows diverse teams perform better. A recent analysis by McKinsey & Company found that organizations in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25 per cent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile. In the case of ethnic and cultural diversity, McKinsey’s 2020 report, Diversity Wins: How Inclusion Matters, found that companies in the top quartile for ethnic and cultural diversity outperformed those in the fourth quartile by 36 per cent in profitability.

As of fall 2019, women represented 36.5 per cent of the undergraduate population in the Faculty of Mathematics and 24.4 per cent in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science. At the graduate level, these numbers are 32 per cent and 18.9 per cent respectively. These percentages have been increasing over the past decade, thanks in large part to the work of Women in Computer Science (WiCS), ��ݮ��Ƶ Women’s Impact Network (WWIN), the Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing (CEMC) and Women in Mathematics (WiM).

An aspiring female entrepreneur

Part of Liu’s journey at ��ݮ��Ƶ included time on Tutturu, a startup that won $50,000 in the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ’s Velocity Pitch competition in 2020. Liu is currently supporting the Tutturu team as a marketing lead but the time she spent learning to pitch an idea and the connections she made with other entrepreneurial students in Velocity has expanded her network. Beyond the Velocity community, Liu met other students interested in starting ventures in an entrepreneurship course offered through ��ݮ��Ƶ’s Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business.

Liu is taking everything she’s learned about entrepreneurship into another role as fellow for MiraclePlus, an incubator based in China. She is building connections between people with promising startup ideas in ��ݮ��Ƶ and MiraclePlus, the incubator founded by global tech leader Lu Qi, the former chief operating officer at Baidu and a former executive vice president at Microsoft.

As an international student, Liu hopes to continue to build a global community of women and other marginalized groups who are as passionate about tech and transforming the world as she is. “I’ve watched women who lead and they really know their engineering and computing, but they are also very smart about building teams. My dream is to one day be as good as they are.”

Awards, Honours and Rankings

Co-op and Experiential Education

Entrepreneurship

Quantum future: Recovery will depend on keeping information secure

Adriann Kennedy — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 22:37:46 +0000

��ݮ��Ƶ quantum startup is working to secure information in a post-pandemic future with businesses increasingly dependent on the internet

David Jao
Professor, Faculty of Mathematics
> Chief Cryptographer, EvolutionQ Inc.
> ��ݮ��Ƶ Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute

The COVID-19 pandemic hobbled economies around the world, but ��ݮ��Ƶ spinoff companies such as evolutionQ are working to secure Canada’s recovery.

The company’s latest venture involves firing photons at satellites in space to pioneer solutions for ultra-secure “quantum keys” that lock and unlock encrypted information. The Canadian Space Agency recently awarded evolutionQ a research grant to help bring satellite-based quantum key distribution into a future world where economic security will very much depend on computer security.

David Jao, chief cryptographer at evolutionQ and a professor in ��ݮ��Ƶ’s Faculty of Mathematics, says Canada needs such a system because of the numerous cyber threats ahead.

The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security recently released a cyber threat assessment report that says the number of cyber threat actors is rising, and they are becoming more sophisticated. At the same time, the pandemic has made people and businesses even more dependent on the internet and its underlying technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and 5G wireless networks.

Quantum computers are also on the horizon. Utilizing the strange rules of quantum mechanics, they will enable super-fast computations that ordinary computers would find too difficult. Although it is impossible to know exactly how quantum computers could be used, they do hold revolutionary potential such as being able to simulate new materials or pharmaceuticals, or make big leaps in artificial intelligence.

��ݮ��Ƶ accelerates research for a quantum future

The University of ��ݮ��Ƶ has a Transformative Quantum Technologies program funded by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund to accelerate research into an exciting new quantum future. But Jao says where there is promise, there is also danger. Quantum computers could break the cryptography currently being used by banks, government agencies and industries.

That’s why companies such as evolutionQ are already developing post-quantum cryptography solutions. Jao is an expert in developing post-quantum cryptography protocols that can co-exist with quantum computers. He was instrumental in inventing an “isogeny-based post-quantum cryptography” system which is currently a candidate for industry standardization.

Jao says ��ݮ��Ƶ is widely regarded as a world-leading research centre in quantum and post-quantum cryptography. “It has what is probably the biggest concentration of quantum related researchers anywhere in the world.” That, in turn, draws even more top researchers here.

��ݮ��Ƶ’s ecosystem of quantum computing startups

The Institute for Quantum Computing has spawned a rich ecosystem of quantum computer-related startup companies that are “situated to take advantage of this pipeline of talented researchers working in this quantum space,” Jao says, adding that the Canadian government sees this work as a path to growing the economy.

“There are clear benefits to Canada in terms of economic growth and international competitiveness to have Canada be at the front of this game,” Jao says.

Computers are certainly a big part of our world right now and we can reasonably anticipate that quantum computers will be the next step, he says.

“If we can be at the forefront of that new frontier of knowledge and development, it's good for the country in terms of jobs and international standing, getting great people to come here and building up our economy,” Jao says.

Quantum mechanics: If you observe it you destroy it

Jao explains that the rules of quantum mechanics make particles such as photons an ultra- secure way of sharing cryptographic keys. “In order to spy on that information, you have to observe it, and in quantum mechanics, if you observe it, you destroy it.”

Satellites would be an ideal way to convey the particles that contain the information over long distances. But there are challenges, such as overcoming atmospheric scattering and configuring the detectors and transmitters to smoothly establish these secure quantum communication links.

The Canadian Space Agency project allows the researchers to send the photons and gather the data needed to develop the solutions.

Bringing a unicorn to life

MSC MSC MarComm Co-op — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 19:54:28 +0000

Faire taps into local talent to build region’s latest billion-dollar business

Marcelo Cortes
Faculty of Mathematics
> CTO and Co-founder, Faire

Since the age of 11, Marcelo Cortes has been passionate about computers and coding. By 13, he was considered the “resident computer expert” after his parents bought a system for their family-owned store in Brazil.

Throughout the next decade, Cortes fueled his fascination, studying the new field of Information Technology in high school and college (at the discouragement of his parents), and committing to classes that would formally train him in programming.

By 18, Cortes had secured a well-paying job at a big-city consulting firm. He experienced the intricacies of business and imagined himself in his boss’ shoes, but he wasn’t convinced he was ready for the stresses that came with it.

Fast-forward two decades later, with a move to Canada, enrolment at the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ and prominent roles with Google and Square under his belt, Cortes is now co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) at Faire, an online wholesale marketplace for emerging brands and boutique retailers.

In just under three years, his company has reached “unicorn” status — an expression that reflects the rarity of startups reaching billion-dollar valuations. With offices in Kitchener, San Francisco and Salt Lake City, Faire employs more than 200 people, many with University of ��ݮ��Ƶ connections.

His impact on the world of business doesn’t stop here. Earlier this year, when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, Marcelo Cortes was quick to realize the devastating impact it could have on small, local businesses. Cortes and his team responded quickly with an online calculator designed to help these businesses find inefficiencies and better prepare for the future.

Growing a global business, locally

So how did this once small startup amass to a behemoth business in such a short time? For Cortes, it’s his team.

“The people, for sure, are a big part of the equation,” Cortes says. “We put a lot of effort into the team we bring in.”

Cortes understands the importance of what he calls, “experienced DNA from all over the world.” With the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ down the road, Faire’s Kitchener-based office is just minutes away from local and international talent. In fact, Cortes estimates that around 80 per cent of Faire’s regional employees are ��ݮ��Ƶ alumni or co-op students.

“A big part of remaining in the ��ݮ��Ƶ region is because there’s talent here, talent that’s comparable to what you could find in Silicon Valley,” Cortes says. “And if we find talent elsewhere in the world, we can also bring them here.”

It’s taken a combination of talented minds and progressive business leaders to propel Faire from a startup to unicorn — and not every step has been easy either.

Two years after arriving in Canada, Cortes was ready to make Canada his home. He furthered his studies in computer science by enrolling at the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ, home to one of the largest mathematics and computing centres in the world.

“It was very hard to get in. ��ݮ��Ƶ looked at my marks and they weren’t great, so it didn’t make sense for the University [to accept me],” Cortes says.

But in familiar determination, Cortes pushed forward, reaching out to friends who had attended the University and vouched for his application through letters. The University took note, allowing him a shot at completing entrance exams in math and physics. Cortes aced both and was accepted.

Being so close to local talent landed Cortes in the sights of Google, getting hired as a senior engineer at just 28-years-old. “The first week that I started working there, I called my wife and told her this is like Disneyland for software engineers,” Cortes says. “Anything you could imagine was available to you. But after working there for a while you start to see no company is perfect.”

So, Cortes got to work.

A win-win for students and employers

By hiring several co-ops each term, Faire’s local presence has provided ��ݮ��Ƶ students with ample job opportunities, leveraging talent like fourth-year Computer Science student Bella Lu. Lu worked on improving Faire’s website and enhancing the user experience.

“This has been the best co-op term I’ve had,” Lu says, a ��ݮ��Ƶ international student from China. “Faire gives us work that is going to impact the user, so it feels good to show people the website and say that this feature was made by me.”

Computer Science student Bella Lu and Marcelo Cortes at Faire's office

It’s a role Lu says she’s proud of and will be returning to as an employee upon graduation. That’s right — Lu has already received a full-time job offer at Faire and so have the other four co-op students on her team.

The gains aren’t only good for the students. A recent study by Deloitte showed that for every $1 a business invests in a co-op student, they see a $2  economic gain. 

“I feel very proud when I talk to my friends and family who are now asking for job referrals,” Lu says through a smile. “It feels good to be contributing to a big company."

For Cortes, the feeling is mutual.

“The beauty of the co-op program is that you get people who are motivated, they’re super smart and they already have experience — they add value,” Cortes says. “And when they graduate, we want to keep them here. So, that’s why we’ve stayed here.”

Co-op and Experiential Education

Entrepreneurship