My latest piece for New Scientist

A survey of workers who used generative AI found that they used critical thinking less when they trusted the AI to do the task accurately newscientist.com/article/246844…

The press release vs the paper

50 years after it was first dreamt up by Douglas Hofstadter, this fascinating fractal butterfly has been found in a real physical system (in graphene, no less)! It's butterflies all the way down 🦋 newscientist.com/article/247002…

I had made Microsoft Quantum aware of issues before publication of their latest Nature paper (which uses the TGP to tune up their devices). Now I have made all issues public. In short: The topological gap protocol and all claims based on it are flawed. arxiv.org/abs/2502.19560

Physics folks - I'll be at the APS Global Summit in a few weeks, looking for stories for New Scientist. If you're presenting something amazing or just want to tell me about your research over lunch, I'll be available so please do reach out.

We provide a classical simulation of DWave quantum "s-word" paper. Here it is arxiv.org/abs/2503.08247 , great work by Linda Mauron Computational Quantum Science Lab, check it out! Our findings are in line with the other pre-print from Flatiron Institute Miles Stoudenmire that just came out, but with a very

Thanks to Karmela Padavic-Callaghan (they/them) with New Scientist for the clear writeup of my upcoming work with Jonah Kudler-Flam and Gautam Satishchandran (paper to appear very soon)!

Wonderfully written article by Dr. Karmela Padavic-Callaghan New Scientist! Summary and perspective into our recent work on the framework of Quantum Darwinism. Here are the links for our recent papers discussed in the news article: arxiv.org/abs/2503.14791 arxiv.org/abs/2504.00781

I'm hiring a postdoc! If you'd like to work with me on quantum learning, error correction, quantum algorithms, and FTQC at Virginia Tech in the Washington, DC metro area, please apply here: careers.pageuppeople.com/968/cw/en-us/j…

Two 4-year fully funded PhD positions available in my group at University College Dublin. Application deadline Saturday May 31st. Come join us in exploring the wonderful world of quantum many-body physics! See ciaranhickey.weebly.com/uploads/7/5/0/… for more details.

Also a report on it by New Scientist by Karmela Padavic-Callaghan (they/them) newscientist.com/article/248299…

It’s honestly so disrespectful and irresponsible that the national media has mostly ignored the afscme33 city workers’ strike in Philly, now in week two. It’s a huge story with massive implications for the 6th biggest city in the country. Hell, I’ll write about it! Email me!

The hunt for the next Busy Beaver number is one of the most exciting things happening in maths today and the heroes behind it are a community of enthusiasts, fishing bits of exotic code from a deep mathematical abyss that seems to lead into the unknowable newscientist.com/article/248705…

For interested students: Quantum Hackathon LATAM 2025 is happening this year (October 1-3) at the University of Montevideo, Uruguay. ingenieria.um.edu.uy/quantum_hackat…

Reflecting also on the sheer amount of people, effort, and money serious field work like this epic NSF-funded project requires. Reliable weather forecasts and weather data don't just fall from the sky!!

Picosecond synchronization of mode-locked lasers for metropolitan-scale quantum networks National Institute of Standards and Technology Joint Quantum Institute Optica Karmela Padavic-Callaghan (they/them) opnmagazine arxiv.org/abs/2504.13773

Applications for the 2025-2026 cycle of the 51 Pegasi b Postdoctoral Fellowship in Planetary Astronomy are now open! Please don't hesitate to reach out if you are interested in applying with Yale as a host institution :) hsfoundation.org/programs/scien…

"For quantum computers to get significant speed-up, they need to take advantage of special structure. They do not offer significant speed-up for unstructured problems, so we do not expect to be able to just throw them at anything." Andrew Childs arxiv.org/pdf/2408.16175