Bernardo Huberman Talk

We’re lucky to have a genuine legend visiting DTU this summer. Bernardo Huberman is coming by on August 20th and will give a talk at 14:00 (full details below).

I’m excited to announce - not only that Bernardo is visiting - but that he’s giving a talk about quantum information for non-physicists. If you are a data scientist or a computer scientist who has always meant to figure out what all the quantum fuss is about, this is your chance to hear it explained by one of the people actually building the next generation of quantum technology – no prior quantum mechanics required.

And I’m not exaggerating when I say that Bernardo is a legend. He is one of those physicists whose career quietly shaped several fields at once. After a PhD in physics, he spent years at Xerox PARC and then as a Senior Fellow at HP Labs, where he directed the Social Computing Research Group. He is one of the originators of the ecology of computation, he wrote The Laws of the Web: Patterns in the Ecology of Information (MIT Press), and he was thinking hard about the economics of attention and the dynamics of large distributed systems long before “social data” was a phrase anyone used. These days his attention has turned to quantum.

That last turn is what will be benefitting us. Bernardo is now working on what superposition and entanglement let you build that classical physics simply cannot: cryptographic and computational mechanisms with provable security, quantum-enabled time synchronization for global networks, and – the part I find most intriguing – quantum technology as a foundation for trust between humans and machines. Do not miss this one.

If you want to get to know Bernardo a little before he arrives, I can warmly recommend his appearance on the Huberman Lab podcast, How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life – a lovely, wide-ranging conversation about how he thinks and works. You can also find him on LinkedIn and X.

The talk details are

Time: August 20th, 14:00
Place: DTU, Building 324, room 240 (Lyngby campus)
Title: The Quantum Revolution: Security, Coordination, and Trust
Abstract: Superposition and entanglement are no longer theoretical curiosities; they are the bedrock of a new paradigm in information processing. By harnessing these fundamental quantum phenomena, we can design and implement cryptographic and computational mechanisms with provable security properties that remain unattainable through classical physics alone. This presentation will explain the practical implications of these mechanisms, demonstrating how they address long-standing, complex challenges in economics and communication technology, such as secure private coordination protocols. Beyond security, we will explore the critical role of quantum mechanics in modern infrastructure. We will show how quantum-enabled time synchronization serves as the backbone of reliable, high-performance global networks. Finally, the talk will synthesize these technical advancements to examine a profound social implication: the potential for quantum technology to function as a foundational enabler of trust in human and machine-mediated interactions.

Much of the underlying work is paywalled, but the preprints are all on arXiv if you want to read ahead:

Quantum Secured Internet Transport – Bernardo A. Huberman, Jing Wang, Bob Lund
Experimental demonstration of quantum spread spectrum – Bernardo A. Huberman, Bob Lund, Jing Wang, Lin Chen
Quantum Synchronization of Star Networks – Brian Rollick, Zhensheng Jia, Bernardo A. Huberman

This is a rare chance to get the quantum story from an expert who can tell it without drowning you in formalism. Whatever your field, come along – I think it will be worth your afternoon.