Pedram Roushan is a research scientist who works at Google AI. He studies quantum computing and quantum simulation.

Biography

Pedram Roushan was born in Sari, Iran in 1978 and grew up in Iran. His family followed the Baháʼí Faith and faced punishment and discrimination after the Islamic Revolution. His parents lost their jobs because of their beliefs, and his father had to hide for several years. In 1984, to avoid harm, he and his family moved to a small village near Gilan province, where Roushan attended elementary school. In 1996, Roushan was not allowed to study at Iranian universities. He then enrolled at the Baháʼí Institute for Higher Education, where he earned a degree in civil engineering.

In 2001, with the help of the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society (HIAS), he came to the United States as a religious refugee. He studied at the University of Pittsburgh and graduated with the highest honors in 2005. He completed his PhD at Princeton University under Ali Yazdani in 2011. His research focused on diluted magnetic semiconductors and included the first scanning tunneling microscopy on the surface of topological insulators. Later, he worked as a postdoc at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in John Martinis’ group, where he helped build a quantum computer using superconducting qubits. In 2014, he joined Google with the Martinis team and was part of the group that demonstrated the first claimed quantum supremacy on Google’s Sycamore processor.

Roushan is a Principal Research Scientist at Google Quantum AI. He leads experiments on noisy intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) algorithms, focusing on simulating quantum phenomena using NISQ processors. With his team and collaborators, he has studied information scrambling in quantum circuits, non-equilibrium dynamics, and universality classes in quantum spin models. His work includes research on phases of matter away from equilibrium, such as time crystals and measurement-induced entanglement phases, as well as the quantum statistics of abelian and non-abelian excitations in the Kitaev toric code model.

As of November 2023, Roushan has published more than 70 articles in peer-reviewed journals, which have been cited over 25,000 times (h-index of 61). At the 18th Capri Spring School in 2024, he introduced the term “discoverino” to describe small discoveries made by NISQ devices, which could also be achieved through theoretical work or using significant classical computing resources.

Publications (selected)

• McEwen, M; Faoro, L; Arya, K; et al. (2022). "Resolving catastrophic error bursts from cosmic rays in large arrays of superconducting qubits". Nature Physics. 18 (1): 107–111. arXiv: 2104.05219. Bibcode: 2022NatPh..18..107M. doi: 10.1038/s41567-021-01432-8.
• Mi, X; Ippoliti, M; Quintana, C; et al. (2021). "Time-crystalline eigenstate order on a quantum processor". Nature. 601 (7894): 531–536. arXiv: 2107.13571. Bibcode: 2022Natur.601..531M. doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-04257-w. PMC 8791837. PMID 34847568.
• Mi, X; Roushan, P; Quintana, C; et al. (2021). "Information scrambling in quantum circuits". Science. 374 (6574): 1479–1483. arXiv: 2101.08870. Bibcode: 2021Sci…374.1479M. doi: 10.1126/science.abg5029. PMID 34709938.
• Satzinger, K; Liu, Y.-J.; Smith, A; et al. (2021). "Realizing topologically ordered states on a quantum processor". Science. 374 (6572): 1237–1241. arXiv: 2104.01180. Bibcode: 2021Sci…374.1237S. doi: 10.1126/science.abi8378. PMID 34855491.
• Arute, Frank; Arya, Kunal; Babbush, Ryan; et al. (2019). "Quantum supremacy using a programmable superconducting processor". Nature. 574 (7779): 505–510. arXiv: 1910.11333. Bibcode: 2019Natur.574..505A. doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-1666-5. PMID 31645734.
• Roushan, P.; Neill, C.; Tangpanitanon, J.; et al. (2017). "Spectroscopic signatures of localization with interacting photons in superconducting qubits". Science. 358 (6367): 1175–1179. arXiv: 1709.07108. Bibcode: 2017Sci…358.1175R. doi: 10.1126/science.aao1401. PMID 29191906.
• O'Malley, PJJ; Babbush, R; Kivlichan, ID; et al. (2016). "Scalable quantum simulation of molecular energies". Physical Review X. 6 (3) 031007. arXiv: 1512.06860. Bibcode: 2016PhRvX…6c1007O. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevX.6.031007.
• Kelly, J; Barends, R; Fowler, A G; et al. (2015). "State preservation by repetitive error detection in a superconducting quantum circuit". Nature. 519 (7541): 66–69. arXiv: 1411.7403. Bibcode: 2015Natur.519…66K. doi: 10.1038/nature14270. PMID 25739628.
• Barends, R; Kelly, J; Megrant, A; et al. (2014). "Superconducting quantum circuits at the surface code threshold for fault tolerance". Nature. 508 (7497): 500–503. arXiv: 1402.4848. Bibcode: 2014Natur.508..500B. doi: 10.1038/nature13171. PMID 24759412.
• Hor, YS; Williams, AJ; Checkelsky, JG; et al. (2010). "Superconductivity in Cu x Bi 2 Se 3 and its Implications for Pairing in the Undoped Topological Insulator". Physical Review Letters. 104 (5) 057001. arXiv: 0909.2890