Dr. Maria Schuld, Xanadu and University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, Quantum Machine Learning

Note some changes in schedule for next two guest lectures. 

Abstract:
This talk is a guided tour through the emerging research discipline of quantum machine learning, which investigates how quantum computers could be used for "intelligent" data analysis. A focus will be the strategy of optimizing the physical parameters of a quantum circuit in order to train it like a neural network. We will try to understand what the resulting models look like, how they can be integrated into modern machine learning pipelines, and what the most pressing open questions are.

Speaker Bio:
Maria Schuld works as a senior researcher for the Toronto-based quantum computing start-up Xanadu, as well as for the Big Data and Informatics Flagship of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, from which she received her PhD in theoretical physics in 2017. She co-authored the book "Supervised Learning with Quantum Computers" (Springer 2018) and is a lead developer of the PennyLane software framework for quantum differentiable programming. Besides her research on the intersection of quantum computing and machine learning, Maria has a postgraduate degree in political science, and a keen interest in the interplay between emerging technologies and society.