QED-C® recognizes Tom Lubinski, recipient of the Carl Williams Award
The Quantum Economic Development Consortium’s (QED-C) second annual Carl Williams Award was presented to Tom Lubinski for his long-standing support of QED-C, especially its standards-related efforts. The award was given to Lubinski at the QED-C annual meeting in Washington, D.C. in December 2022.
According to QED-C Executive Director, Celia Merzbacher, “The spirit of this award is to recognize someone who has really contributed to QED-C and to the industry in an extraordinary way. The steering committee’s choice of Lubinski for this special recognition was unanimous.”
Tom Lubinski was the founding chair of the QED-C Standards and Performance Metrics Technical Advisory Committee and continued to serve as the Committee’s vice chair, leading efforts to develop application-oriented performance benchmarks for quantum computers. Lubinski also works as the Chief Software Architect at Quantum Circuits, a founding member of QED-C.
When asked about the impressive growth of the consortium, Lubinski points out, “Initially, companies join an organization like QED-C to make sure they don’t miss out on something. The opportunity that I saw was the benefit that could accrue to not only the company I’m involved in, but the whole quantum field through collaboration.” He explained that collaborating saves substantial time and money. “For example, together we created a body of software that everyone can use. That’s a big benefit. The members get input from highly intelligent people from numerous companies—not just their own. Our success belongs to everyone in the group. I feel the best, however, about driving the collaborative effort and keeping people collaborating despite challenges,” he added. The open-source project and links to associated publications are available at https://github.com/SRI-International/QC-App-Oriented-Benchmarks.
Carl Williams, the award’s namesake and first recipient, recalled being surprised to receive the inaugural award and said jokingly, “It’s embarrassing. They usually name these awards after people that are already dead.” He went on to add, “QED-C and the steering committee decide who will receive it and like most awards, many people deserve it. There are those, however, that are clearly the most important to the organization and to the industry, and they are recognized,” said Williams, “And hopefully they don’t get embarrassed by having it named after me.”
QED-C is an industry-driven consortium that aims to enable and grow the quantum industry and supply chain. The consortium connects the diverse ecosystem of suppliers, hardware and software developers, service providers and end users. QED-C is focused on identifying and addressing gaps in technology, workforce, standards and metrics.