Engineering the Quantum Future

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provided by Wisconsin Union Directorate

A close-up of John Martinis.

John Martinis

media release: Physicist and 2025 Nobel Prize winner John Martinis will speak at Shannon Hall in Memorial Union Mar. 23 at 7 p.m. on his Nobel Prize winning research on quantum computing as part of the Wisconsin Union Directorate (WUD) Distinguished Lecture Series (DLS) Committee's free lecture lineup.

The event, titled “John Martinis: Engineering the Quantum Future” is a Donald Kerst Lecture Series Event, and will feature a 60-minute lecture followed by a 30-minute audience Q&A. Tickets will become available to students and the public on Mar. 16 at 2pm, with a limit of one ticket per person. Registration for the event will be available on the Wisconsin Campus Arts Ticketing Page. CART captioning is provided with ASL interpretation upon request prior to the event.

In 2025, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics to Martinis for his work on the development of superconducting quantum circuits and experimental research in quantum information science.

Co-founder of Qolab, a start up focused on developing utility-scale superconducting quantum computers, Martinis serves as CTO and continues to advance next-generation superconducting qubit technology and quantum system design through collaboration across industries.

Martinis has led Google’s quantum hardware team, achieving the landmark 2019 quantum supremacy experiment, the first demonstration of a quantum computer outperforming the world’s most powerful classical supercomputer on a computational task. 

“I always learn something from the questions people ask, and from the way I am required to answer them,” Martinis said in a 2025 interview with CTech. ”I just love being a scientist; it allows me to ask questions about the world every day.“

Martinis received his doctorate in physics from the University of California-Berkeley and is a distinguished professor of physics at the University of California-Santa Barbara. He is the recipient of the John Stewart Bell Prize (2021) and the Fritz London Memorial Prize (2014) for his work in quantum computing. 

The student-led WUD DLS Committee brings engaging and influential people to the UW–Madison campus to encourage thought-provoking conversations. WUD includes 12 committees and six Wisconsin Hoofers clubs that program thousands of events each year.

Patrons can learn more about the upcoming free talk featuring John Martinis here.