A BRIEF BIO

Greetings! I’m Dr. Christopher Abraham Chamberland, presently living in the vibrant state of Texas. Although I now call Texas home, my roots stretch back to Canada, where I was born and spent my formative years amidst the charm of Ottawa, the nation’s capital. From a young age, I was very passionate about science and understanding the fundamental laws governing our universe. After taking my first physics class, I was amazed at how math could be used to make accurate predictions of natural phenomena. My mind was made up, and I was convinced I would pursue a career as a physicist.

The first step was to obtain my undergraduate degree in physics and math at the University of Ottawa, where I graduated in the summer of 2012. At this point I knew that string theory was a candidate theory for explaining the most fundamental inner workings of our universe, such as what’s inside an electron, and how does general relativity interplay with quantum mechanics. As such, I started a masters degree at McGill in Montreal to pursue research in string theory. However I quickly realized that future jobs in this field were very limited. After facing this reality check, I decided to switch focus to quantum information under the supervision of Aashish Clerk and Bill Coish. After completing my masters degree in 2014, quantum computing was still a relatively new field with many potential applications to the real world. As such, I decided to pursue my PhD at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) in Waterloo, supervised by the director and former student of Steven Hawking, Raymond Laflamme. This proved to be one of the best decisions of my life (see my dedicated blog post). I quickly realized that to make quantum computers useful, dealing with errors arising from noise was of critical importance. As such, my PhD was focused on quantum error correction and fault-tolerant quantum computing, which is a method of using larger systems with the goal of detecting and correcting errors whenever they occur. 

 

During my PhD, I was very fortunate to have chance of working with amazing collaborators across the world. I first visited the University of Sherbrooke for three months to work with David Poulin on Clifford frame quantum computing. Shortly thereafter, I did an internship at Microsoft in Redmond Washington, supervised by Michael Beverland. There I had the idea to develop a flag fault-tolerant protocol for arbitrary distance error correcting codes. At the same time, my work with David garnered the attention of Barbara Terhal at TU Delft in the Netherlands. After my internship at Microsoft, I visited her group for nearly half a year to work on higher dimensional codes with Jonathan Conrad and Nikolas Breuckmann. Oddly enough, the QIP conference that year was in Delft. During the conference, I had a chance to meet with the IBM team, and in particular Andrew Cross. This encounter resulted in an internship at IBM the following summer. The internship went quite well, and I was offered a full time position at IBM as a Research Staff Member in Yorktown Heights NY, starting in the fall of 2018. 

 

My time at IBM was filled with great productivity and innovation. I got the opportunity to lead the research efforts on the Heavy Hexagon code, which ended up being an important component in IBM’s quantum processor designs. At a certain juncture, the renowned physicist Fernando Brandao from Caltech presented an enticing opportunity at both AWS and Caltech. At the time, Amazon was starting a new effort in Quantum Computing, which was to be held on Caltech’s campus. I had always wanted to be part of a large venture from an early stage, and could not pass up the opportunity. As such I joined the team in January of 2020. Initially, the theory team consisted of just Fernando and myself, and I had the chance to see the team grow to the size it is today. I was also the lead author in Amazon’s blueprint paper for building a quantum computer, and had a chance to work with some really amazing people. 

 

During my time at Amazon, I kept in touch with my good friend Guillaume Verdon I had met during grad school at IQC. Eventually, there came the time where Guillaume started his own company in AI called Extropic, and invited me to join. It took quite some convincing since I was happy with my position at AWS. Nevertheless, the prospect of joining a startup nearly from its inception, in a field with immense potential to effect significant global impact within a relatively short timeframe, proved too compelling to resist. I thus joined the company as the Principal Architect, and this is where I am today. It was a bold move to make the jump from quantum computing to AI. I had amassed a good level of expertise in the quantum field, culminating in a remarkably rewarding career. However the opportunities in AI, as well as its potential impact, made the switch worth it. In the near future, I will share some the great work we’ve been doing in my Quantum and AI blog posts. I will also dedicate some time to writing blog posts about past work in quantum computing.

Lastly, in addition to science and computing, I’ve always been very passionate with what nature has to offer and the outdoors. As such, on the rare occasions where I have some free time, I enjoy going on hiking trips in exotic locations. I will use this website to write blog posts about many of these trips, and to offer reviews and suggestions on many locations, including some which may not be well advertised but are nevertheless very worthwhile visiting! If you have any feedback, or questions regarding quantum computing, AI or hiking trips, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I look forward to our discussions!