The scientific collaboration: Quanterall’s R&D Lab & The IAPS— Part 2
Deep dive into the spooky world of quantum computing
Vesselin Gueorguiev is a theoretical physics researcher and university lecturer with substantial experience in computational physics and an interest in high-energy particle physics, cosmology, astrophysics, and mathematical physics. Currently, he is a member of the Institute for Advanced Physical Studies in Sofia, Bulgaria, and the Ronin Institute in the USA.
Could you tell us more about yourself?
I was born in Bulgaria, where I did most of my early studies and career. In 1995, I went to the United States and received my PhD in Nuclear Physics at Louisiana State University. After that, I spent some time as a postdoctoral researcher at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Then I went to do postdoctoral research at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas in Madrid, Spain. I came back to Lawrence Livermore National Lab to do research in nuclear physics to continue the work that I had started at LSU. After my postdoc at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, I spent about 10 years teaching and researching, with the idea of continuing my research in nuclear physics and working with my collaborators on nuclear research from Livermore National Lab and Louisiana. Unfortunately, that was a hard way to figure out that it’s not easy to be a lecturing instructor and to do research. I spent about 10 years teaching at the University of California Merced and California State University Stanislaus. These are the two main research and university systems in California.
In 2015, I went to China to teach for the Sichuan University Pittsburgh Institute. There, I learned about quantum computing’s coming of age. I decided to come back to California to learn how to build a startup and what it means to have a business. All this is because quantum mechanics and quantum physics were something that I was always interested in. Since then, I’ve been in California, and I’m currently a member of two institutes where I’m doing my work. The Institute for Advanced Physical Studies in Sofia is one, and the Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship in New Jersey, USA, is another. In all, I spent most of my days in California.
How did you decide that you wanted to go with physics, and especially nuclear studies?
I felt that physics was always my path, apart from nuclear physics, which was a little bit different. In fact, I didn’t explore many other alternatives. There could have been something in art or mathematics, but basically, I didn’t grow up with anyone with art knowledge. I did enjoy drawing and doing art. I had a friend in middle school with whom we did this. I’m still kind of inclined mathematically. They said, since middle school, I had always been interested in science fiction articles in journals like Noca, Nature, Science, and Learning about space-time black holes in the universe and how things work, and this was something that I enjoyed reading. And mathematics was something that I was always trying to understand. Reading books about tricks you can do with math cards and various mechanical activities
Back then, in Bulgaria, there was the Sofia Mathematical Gymnasium, a school that accepted students starting at the end of seventh grade and moving towards the eighth grade. Unfortunately, I didn’t know about it at the time. I knew it when I was in eighth grade. I was looking for the next high school to go to. So, this narrowed down to two options for me: one was the Kirov Gymnasium, which was the Electromechanical Gymnasium. The reason was that I liked playing with toys, disassembling polo toys, and putting them back together. But the other was National Science High School in Sofia, which started in the ninth grade. That was something that my mother pointed out to me and said, “Well, you should apply.” Actually, she was the one telling me that I should go and apply to these two places, knowing my inclinations. So basically, getting into the Natural Science High School settled me into the physics direction. I really enjoyed my high school years. Some of my friends from there became lifetime friends for me. We went to university together, and we are still staying in touch. Every time we have an opportunity, we try to meet in Bulgaria or other places around the world.
An interesting part was that after my studies at Sofia University, in my final year, I had the opportunity to choose a topic for my diploma. I was really excited about quantum groups, quantum algebras, and quantum physics. So I started asking people at the university, and they told me to go to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences to the Nuclear Institute and talk to people there. I remember going there and meeting an experimentalist who appointed me to connect with Rusi Rusev, Peter Raychev, and Annie Georgieva. Starting with them was my line of research towards nuclear physics. Because those people were some of the first people to apply quantum groups to nuclear physics and to try to demonstrate that this was applicable. So my diploma was an attempt to understand how I could apply further quantum groups to nuclear physics. And from there, that was my path into nuclear physics. Then I came to Louisiana State University to continue my research in nuclear physics.
So, was this the essential part of quantum computing to become a professional path?
Yes, this was basically the underlying kind of passion. I didn’t get into quantum computing until I went to China. I spent about 10 years teaching, and when I went there, it was mostly because of my ability and experience teaching scientists and engineers. Not so much as doing research. This was my attempt when I went to China. Something that they promised was that research would be important, but they really wanted to emphasize teaching eventually. Of course, teaching is important. But I think really good results are coming when teaching is aligned with research and with the passion of the researchers. so that it becomes natural rather than something that you have to do because of your employment.
Are you a member of the Institute of Applied Advanced Physical Studies?
I became an associate member in February 2017, when I came back from China. But I knew about the institute about a year or even two ahead of time. In 2016, Stoyan Mishev reached out to me and asked me to join the new institute. I really like the idea that we can focus mostly on the research and less on the administrative things. As a result, I became an associate member of the institute. At the same time, I joined the Running Institute in New Jersey. It was probably a month later when I was already in California.
What is your contribution to the general mission of the institute? Do you do research with the scientists from there as well, or is everyone on their own?
With Stoyan Mishev, we have a funded project. A two-year project focusing on neutron star equations And we work on this, trying to apply some of the methods that I’ve developed for exactly solvable solutions to nuclear physics for pairing and many-body systems. And we are trying to extend them to neutron stars to see what kind of answers we will receive this way. We had a few events presenting our research at the annual AMiTaNS. This is a conference in Bulgaria, organized by Mihail Todorov. It is about applied mathematics and engineering. I think it’s a wonderful idea to connect different aspects of expertise in mathematics, engineering, physics, and different branches of physics to turn them into applied fields that could be related to businesses someday.
The other collaboration that I started in 2017 with André Maeder, who is a professor emeritus at the Geneva Observatory, Back then, I noticed a paper by him in the archive, and I asked him a few questions and continued discussing the results. Now, we have a long collaboration and about 10 papers that we have already published.
I would also like to highlight that this was paved in part by my previous collaborations and colleagues that I worked with at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Bulgaria, LSU. Lawrence Livermore in Spain, and even in China, which were mostly nuclear physics, and some of them were very mathematical. But they resulted in habits of how to write papers and how to do research. As a result, back then, I had about 50 research papers, and some of these papers had more than 1000 citations in the literature. Some of the papers are actually physical review letters. So I’m really proud that almost each of the collaborations I was involved in generated the Physical Review letter that we published. But as I said, this is a foundation for doing research with other people and bringing fruit in other collaborations and in new research topics.
Can you tell us a little bit more about your future plans?
So, as I mentioned, we will continue working with Stoyan Mishev, and hopefully, we will attract some more students in the nuclear physics direction. I hope that I will find a way to secure funding for the research with André Mador, which is very interesting. And, of course, we are trying to build other collaborations within the institute and also outside of it. We have regular seminars, which will hopefully provide connections with other researchers or companies. And in this direction, since I’m back in California, I was exploring two other directions that were more intrapreneurial.
One of them is educational and about outreach activities where I teach at the New Bulgarian University. Hopefully, some of the students will be interested in what we do at the institute. One of the courses I teach is Introduction to Quantum Computing. I am also a mentor for the Quantum Open Source Foundation and the cue world. And next month, I’ll be starting my fourth cohort with the Quantum Open Source Foundation. This is a different type of teaching that I really enjoy because we work with people that are particularly interested in getting from point A to point B. To learn some specific skills and to apply this new knowledge, which is mostly in quantum computing or quantum physics, and to projects that they found to be their passion and interest,
The other direction that I was exploring was learning how to be an entrepreneur and what it means to build a startup and a business. That’s one place where I really hope that we can connect strongly and collaborate with Quanterall. We have already had some initial collaborations. As a matter of fact, the first version of the course that I’m teaching now to the New Bulgarian University students was presented for the first time to Quanterall programmers a few years ago. And this course was based on some of the lectures that I gave at the hacker dojo in Silicon Valley, in Santa Clara. Before the pandemic, I used to go there and talk to people about quantum computing, explaining to them what quantum computing is about. Since the pandemic, the Hacker Dojo has been closed, but hopefully, now there’ll be a reopening and in-person activities will be more fun.
Can you tell us more about your collaboration with Quanterall, especially the quantum computing plan?
Well, I think we anticipated having to set up a curriculum and plan how to do it in the forthcoming months. The challenge with that is that we have to work with busy people, people who already have jobs and responsibilities, and they usually have all the time in the evening after work. We are very excited about it. But the question is how to make it so that these people will be happy to stay and study with us. It cannot be done in the traditional manner in which you teach students in school or college, because students usually have unlimited time to learn the subject. So that’s what we are trying to figure out: what would be the best way to provide this training in education to people from Quanterall and maybe other companies that will be interested. I hope that I can use my experience from the Quantum Open Source Foundation. It’s more like mentoring the people to figure out what they want to work on, aligning with the needed skills, and guiding them through the project. Learning by practice rather than just reading a book
What is your message to the young people who are choosing to get on the path of science?
I will say that they should study science. It’s actually fun and a good place to be. It may not seem like this when you’re forced to study it. But when you actually find that you can go with the flow, you really enjoy formulating your questions and trying to answer them. It’s very good and enjoyable. So science would bring analytical thinking skills and critical thinking. And this is good practice to identify cause and effect and to figure out what is really out there. On an emotional level, I mentioned that once you start figuring out things on your own, or rediscovering or discovering new things, then it’s really a very high-emotional feeling. It’s very interesting, like a discovery that you can keep doing. And this is a really good thing once you discover how to overcome problems and obstacles. My advice is to just follow your curiosity. But also, following the scientific method means you make sure that the answers you get are really confirmatory of a real thing and not just what you wish to hear.
Now, as an example, I can say that I was really pleased and very happy to learn about Lean Startup. It is related to the most basic and fundamental things about human society and economics. It explains how to run an organization. And the Lean Startup idea is something that was popularized by Eric Ries and Steve Blank in the customer discount development phase. And this is really very interesting because it confirms that you have to talk to customers and users in order to figure out what the real problem is.
Can you recommend a book that you admire and think is going to be a good read?
I already mentioned the “Lean Startup” book series. But going back to the general audience, I would recommend familiar books like “Captain Nemo” by Jules Verne, or similar books where one can see adventurers but also how science fiction becomes reality. For example, “The Invincible” by Stanislav Lam and “I, Robot” by Isaac Asimov are some of my favorite books. It’s not too surprising that the classic books are classics because people have really appreciated them for generations. On the science part, I would recommend “The Road to Reality” by Roger Penrose. This is a wonderful book. Recently, I went through another book that I liked by Leonard Susskind, about quantum mechanics, “The theoretical minimum.” I think for people who are a little bit forward in understanding quantum mechanics and linear algebra, these books could be of interest.
