Dr. Masashi Aono lectures on slime mold-inspired algorithms for challenging optimization problems
08/14/2023
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Dr. Masashi Aono, a project professor at Keio University and CEO of Amoeba Energy Company in Japan, presents "Amoeba-inspired combinatorial optimization engine for trajectory planning of thousands of self-driving robots" for a QBL Quantum Sciences lecture, hosted in collaboration with the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University. This presentation explores an amoeba-inspired optimization engine designed for combinatorially explosive situations like the traveling salesman and satisfiability problems, crafted with a primary focus on next-generation manufacturing and logistics with semi-autonomous robots. This unique approach mirrors the problem-solving techniques of the ancient slime mold, Physarum polycephalum, a single-cell but multinucleate syncytial organism that exhibits complex spatiotemporal oscillatory dynamics. The lecture includes an introduction and Q&A moderated by the QBL director, comparisons to quantum annealing architectures, and a rich discussion across physics, biology, engineering, and computer science including Dr. Suyash Bajpai, Dr. Nirosha Murugan, Dr. Patrick McMillen, Dr. Doug Blackiston, Dr. Georgia Dunston, and others. You may contact us to receive announcements of future QBL Quantum Sciences lectures.
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QBL members attend Princeton-TAMU Quantum Summer School and Quantum Science Camp in Casper, WY
07/28/2023
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QBL team members Dr. Suyash Bajpai, Mr. Hamza Patwa, Dr. James Murray Jr., and Dr. Philip Kurian attend the Princeton-Texas A&M University Summer School on Quantum Physics (QSS) and Quantum Science Camp (QSC) at Casper College in Wyoming from July 17th-July 28th. The QSS has been directed for several decades by Dr. Marlan Scully and Dr. M. Suhail Zubairy (pictured in photo with QBL members and future QBL student James Murray III), both distinguished professors of quantum optics at Texas A&M University and joint authors of a classic text in the field. In the QSC, high school students and teachers are exposed to the quantum sciences through lectures by Dr. Zubairy and colleagues from his precalculus-only text Quantum Mechanics for Beginners (Oxford UP, 2020). QBL team members present on laser-induced filamentation in dense gases (Bajpai), single-photon superradiance in cylindrical structures (Patwa), quantum gravity (Patwa), a quantum biology unit of study for fourth and fifth graders (Murray), quantum optical mega-networks in biological architectures (Kurian), and the computational capacity of life and observable matter in the universe (Kurian).
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QBL welcomes new postdoctoral scholar with support from the HU Office of Research
07/10/2023
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Thanks to support from the Howard University Office of Research, Dr. Suyash Bajpai -- a specialist in nonlinear quantum optics -- joins the Quantum Biology Lab with his newly minted Ph.D. from Temple University in Philadelphia, PA.
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“Answering life’s deepest questions”, the QBL is profiled in Howard Magazine
06/07/2023
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QBL members and their research activities are highlighted in the Spring/Summer 2023 issue of Howard Magazine. The article discusses the many applications of the QBL’s work, including – in the words of Dr. Kurian – “new treatment paradigms for cancer and dementia, fast optical sensors for detecting viral pathogens, advanced light-harvesting and photoprotective devices for energy capture and storage, unconventional platforms for quantum computing, and reevaluation of fundamental physical limits on digital and neurobiological information processing.”
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QBL director presents at The Science of Consciousness 2023 Quantum Biology workshop
05/22/2023
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Dr. Kurian presents “Living systems as transducers of light: Quantum (optical) biology at the macroscale” at the TSC 2023 Quantum Biology workshop in Taormina, Sicily, alongside distinguished speakers Jim Al-Khalili, Johnjoe McFadden, Giuseppe Vitiello, and Travis Craddock. The workshop brings together scientists with diverse expertise, spanning biology, physics, chemistry, neuroscience, and quantum theory. It focuses on processes in biology that demand quantum theories for prediction, with extensions to brain function and conscious information processing. The speakers highlight a range of topics, including reactive oxygen species production and bioenergetics, quantum tunneling effects in biological systems, the interaction of classical and quantum states of light with life, quantum optics in neurobiology, quantum field theory dynamics in biology, and the potential role of cytoskeletal vibrations in cognition.
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QBL K-12 liaison selected to participate in Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) teachers' conference
04/01/2023
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Dr. Murray attends the KITP teachers' conference after a competitive selection process. This venue allows high school physics teachers and other educational professionals to interact with leading research scientists from around the world. The conference topic is “What’s in a crystal? A quantum universe” and takes place in Santa Barbara, CA.
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Dr. Kurian presents special seminar at Texas A&M University
03/24/2023
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Dr. Kurian delivers a special seminar describing some of the QBL’s latest work, entitled "Ultraviolet superradiance from mega-networks of tryptophan in biological architectures." His seminar is held at Texas A&M University's Institute for Quantum Science & Engineering (IQSE), directed by Prof. Marlan Scully (of the Scully-Lamb quantum theory of the laser). After the talk, Dr. Kurian met with several distinguished luminaries in the audience, including Prof. Suhail Zubairy and Prof. Shaul Mukamel, as well as other IQSE scientists and trainees.
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Seven QBL staff members awarded support to attend first ever Gordon Research Conference in quantum biology
03/14/2023
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Congratulations to Dr. Muneer Abbas, Dr. Nathan Babcock, Dr. Matteo Gori, Dr. Khatereh Azizi, Dr. James Murray, Vincent Madhlopa, and Jasmine El Mrabti, who each received either a Carl Storm Fellowship or speaker support to attend the Gordon Research Conference: Emerging Methodologies to Investigate Quantum Effects in Biology! Each investigator will present a poster at the GRC taking place in Galveston, TX, on March 19-24, 2023.
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QBL director selected as Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) Fellow
02/14/2023
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Dr. Kurian is selected to be part of the second cohort of KITP Fellows. Funded by the Heising-Simons Foundation, the KITP Fellows program was inaugurated in 2022 and supports bi-directional exchange between the UC Santa Barbara-based physics institute and minority-serving institutions. Dr. Kurian will advance QBL research directions and training opportunities through his participation in two KITP programs: Out-of-equilibrium Dynamics and Quantum Information of Many-body Systems with Long-range Interactions and Deep Learning from the Perspective of Physics and Neuroscience.
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QBL receives major award from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for Matter-to-Life research
01/06/2023
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The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation awards $1M to the QBL as part of its “Matter-to-Life” Program. The grant will support the lab in studying how self-organizing processes give rise to goal-oriented behaviors in the reassembly, agential decision-making, and information-processing activity of the multinucleate slime mold Physarum polycephalum. The QBL will work in collaboration with colleagues from the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University. News of the Sloan Foundation award to the QBL was featured in the Howard University Newsroom, The Sway, and The Quantum Insider.
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Dr. Kurian shines light on quantum worlds at TEDxBrookland (Washington, DC)
10/08/2022
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Philip Kurian, founding director of the Quantum Biology Lab, presents What's Your Reality? Shining Light on Quantum Worlds at this TEDx event - Striving Toward Excellent Minds - in the iconic Brookland neighborhood of Washington, DC. Dr. Kurian's TED talk takes us on a journey from the commonplace (trees and rainbows) to the quantum (electron), exploring our observational capacities, the supra-natural, challenges for our scientific models and philosophical frameworks, the limitlessness of Truth, and the co-relations of interacting communities of human subjectives. To watch the lecture, please access the video by clicking the picture.
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QBL welcomes Malawian graduate student from Eswatini
09/27/2022
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Microbiology specialist Mr. Vincent Madhlopa joins the Quantum Biology Lab, most recently from Eswatini Medical Christian University.
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Prof. David Lidzey and Dr. Tersilla Virgili present new effects in optical microcavities with applications to organic quantum batteries
07/26/2022
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Prof. David Lidzey, professor of physics and director of the Electronic and Photonic Molecular Materials Group at the University of Sheffield (UK), and Dr. Tersilla Virgili, a researcher at the Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnologies of the National Research Council (Italy), deliver a joint presentation to the QBL and wider network on "New effects in optical microcavities: From strong-coupled living bacteria to organic quantum batteries." To watch the lecture, with an introduction by Dr. Kurian and Q&A throughout, please access the video.
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QBL at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics
07/02/2022
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Dr. Kurian participates in scientific discussions at KITP (Santa Barbara, CA) during the program Emerging Regimes and Implications of Quantum and Thermal Fluctuational Electrodynamics.
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Theoretical physicist and author Carlo Rovelli discusses the relational view of quantum physics and quantum gravity
05/17/2022
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Prof. Carlo Rovelli, author of the global bestsellers The Order of Time, Helgoland, and the recently released There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness, presents "The Relational Interpretation of Quantum Physics and Its Implications" to the QBL community. This lecture illustrates the advantages and radicality of interpreting quantum theory as the discovery of a deeply relational structure undergirding physical reality. He explains why this view helps in constructing a quantum theory of gravity and why it deflates radical dualities such as those assumed to give rise to the “hard” mind-body problem. To watch the lecture, with an introduction by Dr. Kurian and wide-ranging Q&A spanning technical physics, conceptual insight, and guiding philosophical frameworks, please access the video.
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Dr. Kurian discusses recentering our knowledge systems in a relational cosmos at AAAS Science for Seminaries event
04/30/2022
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Dr. Kurian delivers a keynote lecture on "Science is Not Enough to Save Us: Recentering our Knowledge Systems in a Relational Cosmos” for an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER)-sponsored public engagement event organized by Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. His presentation explores the dualities between subjectivity and objectivity, spiritual and physical, mind and matter, and potentia and manifestation, examining Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and the usual suspects but also engaging Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Buber, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o in the search for a coherent and global description of reality. His discussion centers on our collective representations of the physical world, whose observational capacities and subjectivities count in our measurements, and how communities of subjectives form networks that construct bodies of knowledge. Communicating how a relational interpretation of quantum physics relinquishes the demand for universal objectivity, Dr. Kurian establishes the significance, mystery, and capaciousness of Truth in the cosmos.
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Dr. Gori presents at Institute for Pure & Applied Mathematics on multiscale approaches in quantum mechanics
04/01/2022
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Dr. Gori presents "Second-Quantization of Many-Body Dispersion Formalism: Towards Modeling of Million Atom Systems in Arbitrary Environments" at IPAM in Los Angeles, California. His presentation illustrates how a quantum field theoretical approach can provide insights into the structure, stability, and dynamical properties of physical, chemical, and biological systems interacting with complex environments.
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The Quantum Biology Laboratory is moving forward by reaching back
03/10/2022
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Dr. James Murray, K-12 Liaison in the QBL and Principal of William Rowen Elementary School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, partners with QBL scientists to establish a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) lab focused on training the next generation of students in quantum information science. Murray envisions the Quantum STEAM Lab—which includes 3D printers, 3D scanners, virtual reality headsets, a green room to create VR experiences, robotics, and science learning spaces to explore quantum concepts—as the first step toward a nationwide school movement integrating immersive learning experiences and cutting-edge science. Dr. Philip Kurian, principal investigator and founding director of the QBL, and Dr. Georgia Dunston, professor emerita and senior advisor in the QBL, both give remarks at the Quantum STEAM Lab’s virtual dedication ceremony.
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Prof. Vlatko Vedral entangles whole organisms to qubits in QBL Quantum Sciences lecture
01/26/2022
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Vlatko Vedral presents "Schrödinger’s tardigrade? Hybrid quantum technologies and living organisms entangled to quantum bits" for the QBL's Quantum Sciences lecture series. His presentation describes the basics of witnessing entanglement and contextualizes some of our present understanding of macroscopic quantum phenomena, in particular the few-millikelvin, ultra-low pressure superconducting qubit experiments with the wondrous, cryptobiotic “slow steppers” known as tardigrades. The lecture includes an introduction by Dr. Babcock and Q&A moderated by Dr. Kurian, which features a rich discussion including Templeton Prize winner Paul Davies, National Medal of Science recipient Judith Klinman, Nobel laureate William Phillips, and others. You may contact us to receive announcements of future QBL Quantum Sciences lectures.
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QBL director interview: "Searching for the brain's quantum network"
featured in SPIE Photonics Focus
01/01/2022
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Interviewed by the international society for optics and photonics, Dr. Kurian talks about the QBL's groundbreaking work in their search for quantum optical networks in the brain.
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QBL staff present at the African Physical Society joint conference
11/18/2021
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Dr. Kurian lectures on “Light and information as scaffold for organizing life" and Dr. Nathan Babcock presents on "Photonic Cooperativity and Coherence in Microtubule Architectures" at the Joint Virtual Meeting of the African Light Source, African Physical Society, and Pan African Conference on Crystallography.
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Dr. Babcock introduces speakers in Guy Foundation 2021 Autumn Series
11/03/2021 and 11/17/2021
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Dr. Nathan Babcock, postdoctoral scholar in the QBL, delivers overview prolegomena to introduce Professor Margaret Ahmad, Director of Research for the Institute of Biology Paris-Seine at Sorbonne University, and Professor Christoph Simon of the Institute for Quantum Science and Technology and Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary, in the Guy Foundation 2021 Autumn Series.
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Prof. Tristan Hübsch introspects quantum foundations in opening QBL lecture
10/26/2021
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Dr. Tristan Hübsch presents "Introspections on Quantum Introspection" for the Quantum Biology Lab's inaugural lecture. This presentation describes investigations since his 1998 publication "Quantum mechanics is either non-linear or non-introspective" and highlights the Gödelian incompleteness inherent in all fundamental physics, and in axiomatic systems in general. To watch the lecture, with an introduction by Dr. Kurian and Q&A including Dr. William Phillips, who shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics, please access the video.
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QBL kicks off Biological Mentality Workshop
09/27/2021
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Dr. Kurian delivers the opening lecture for the Fifth Annual Workshop on Biological Mentality, an eclectic group of scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers. Other speakers in the series include Christoph Simon, Jack Tuszynski, MacArthur Fellow Stuart Kauffman, and Templeton Prize winner George F. R. Ellis.
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QBL research associate receives Ph.D. with distinction
09/16/2021
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Congratulations to Dr. Khatereh Azizi! As a QBL research associate joint with the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, Dr. Azizi successfully defended her dissertation, with high marks, on "Mass transport through nano-structured membranes."
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QBL seminar at the Politecnico di Torino
09/10/2021
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Dr. Kurian, with support from Dr. Babcock, presents the QBL’s latest results at a seminar to the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Turin on "Cooperative quantum effects from THz to GHz: Evolution of superradiant states in mechanically oscillating tubulin architectures.”
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QBL presents at the UCLA Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute
06/30/2021
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Dr. Kurian delivers a virtual lecture to the UCLA Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute on "What is life today? Light and information as scaffold for organizing whole intelligences, and the future of quantum immortality."
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QBL receives NIH grant to develop ultrafast detector for extant and emerging pathogens
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QBL presents at 2021 Congress of the Canadian Association of Physicists
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QBL director appointed to UCLA Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute
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QBL presents at the RPI Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy Colloquium
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National Academies Workshop in Quantum Biology
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QBL to present at APS March Meeting
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QBL director kicks off Guy Foundation Spring Seminar Series for 2021
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Source: The Guy Foundation
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QBL to lead theory efforts on collaborative NSF grant
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QBL welcomes Canadian postdoctoral scholar from UK
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QBL director appointed to National Academies organizing committee
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QBL presents at Leverhulme QB-DTC seminar series
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QBL presents at the JQI special seminar
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QBL becomes first group outside UK to receive Guy Foundation grant
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American Physical Society March Symposium
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Dr. Gori gives seminar to the Department of Biochemistry in the Howard University College of Medicine
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QBL welcomes its first international postdoctoral scholar
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DOE Argonne Leadership Computing Facility awards QBL one million
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QuEBS 2019 in Puebla, Mexico
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QBL researchers visit collaborators at ICTP in Italy
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UCLA Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics Workshop: Machine Learning for Physics
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NSF selects quantum biology collaborative for Quantum Leap Challenge Institute conceptualization grant
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Dr. Dunston and Dr. Kurian invited to keynote ASU March forum
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QBL receives first major award from DARPA
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