Meet the Innovators of the Future

Researchers Named to MIT Technology Review's 35 Innovators Under 35

They are inquisitive and persistent. They take the road not taken. They are inspired and inspiring. They question. They experiment.

— Reproduced from article by Alexis Harrison, External Relations Lead, IBM Research

Zlatko Minev

Zlatko Minev grew up fascinated with the breakthroughs of Nikola Tesla and the ability to solve problems deemed impossible by unearthing and seizing the power of new science. While taking summer college classes at Stanford University during his high-school days, he made his life choice to pursue physics — in his view, the most fundamental science that can uncover nature at its deepest level. Pursuing physics in college at UC Berkeley, through a series of unexpected events, a freshman Minev found himself working in one of the early quantum computing labs.

And the rest is history.

Since then, Minev has been making 'quantum leaps.' Literally.

Minev surprised the quantum community by settling a debate that's divided physicists for over a century — it was assumed that the energy level of atoms changed in abrupt, random, so-called 'quantum jumps.' Minev devised a landmark experiment and advanced quantum technology to show the contrary — in an experiment deemed impossible. His experiment not only predicts the occurrence of quantum jumps but seizes control of their imminent fate. Last year, Minev published these results from his Ph.D. dissertation at Yale in an article in Nature magazine, "To Catch and Reverse a Quantum Jump Mid-Flight."

Nature summarized the significance of the results: "[The] experiment overturns Bohr's view of quantum jumps, demonstrating that they possess a degree of predictability and when completed are continuous, coherent and even deterministic." The discovery has the potential to transform our fundamental understanding of quantum physics, and was selected as the top Math and Physical Sciences discovery of the year by Discover Magazine.

Technologically, Zlatko's innovations led to the most sensitive and time-resolved quantum measurements and feedback to-date, paving the way to greatly improved quantum sensing technology. Combined with his new results on predictability, these open the door to radically new technologies to correct the errors be deviling quantum computers.

Minev likes to use the analogy of a volcano eruption when describing quantum jumps, which are completely unpredictable in the long term, but with correct monitoring, scientists can detect an advance warning of an imminent disaster eruption and act on it before it has occurred.

What ingredients keeps Minev motivated to keep going forward, who already at age 30, has made seminal contributions to his field?

"I like to create things but in order to create, you have to understand something really, really well," he answered. "And to get to that point, you have to have new insights that no one else has had before, so you can now solve problems that were thought to be unsolvable — like predicting a jump before it occurs. And we can use that knowledge to create new technology." At IBM Quantum, Zlatko continues leading in this path, devising new ways toward full realization of quantum computing, helping accelerate the growth of this new industry.

Outside the lab, Minev is the founder and chairman of the nationwide science outreach organization Open Labs, a recipient of the Yale-Jefferson Award for public service, a Member of the Executive Board of the Yale Graduate Alumni, the host of the IBM Qiskit Quantum Seminar Series on YouTube. He is a frequently invited speaker and keynote presenter at prestigious conferences, such as the septennial Quantum Optics conference, CQIQC Bell Prize Toronto, IQC Quantum Innovators, American Physics Society March Meeting, and top universities, such as MIT, Harvard, and Cambridge, and venues, such as the U.S. Department of Energy, and even Springer Nature's headquarters in London.