Chair’s Award of Best Dissertation in Physics
May 31, 2018 - Gloria Cordova
Jacob Miller completed his PhD under Akimasa Miyake about a year ago, with a dissertation entitled Measurement-Based Quantum Computation and Symmetry-Protected Topological Order. In his thesis, Jacob made fundamental contributions to understanding the kind of many-body entanglement that can enable universal quantum computation within the framework of measurement-based quantum computation. CQuIC’ers were reminded of Jacob’s outstanding research at the 2018 Physics and Astronomy Convocation on May 12, when he was awarded the Chair’s Award for Best Dissertation in Physics for the preceding year. Notable not just for outstanding research, Jacob’s dissertation also contained a full-page paean to CQuIC’s TACLA Coffee Club, for which Jacob was Coffee Commander for several years. Recognizing fully the mutual relationship between coffee and research, Jacob wrote: “For there is no question that in the face of tough research puzzles, prickly conundrums, and flummoxes of every type, we can find solace in the words of noted abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher that, `A cup of coffee—real coffee—homebrowned, home ground, home made, that comes to you dark as a hazel-eye . . . neither lumpy nor frothing on the Java: such a cup of coffee is a match for twenty blue devils and will exorcise them all.’ ’’