Bio
Travis Humble is director of the Quantum Science Center, a Distinguished Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and director of the lab’s Quantum Computing Institute. Travis is leading the development of new quantum technologies and infrastructure to impact the DOE mission of scientific discovery through quantum computing. As director of the QSC, Travis leads the innovation of scalable, resilient quantum information technologies through new materials, devices, and algorithms and facilitates the transfer of quantum technologies to the broadest audience.
In addition, Travis serves as director of the OLCF Quantum Computing User Program by leading the management and operation of quantum computing technologies for a broad base of users. These revolutionary new approaches to familiar computational problems help reduce algorithmic complexity, reduce computational resource requirements like power and communication, and increase the scale at which state-of-the-art scientific applications perform. In this role, Travis leads the design, development, and benchmarking of quantum computing platforms.
Travis is editor-in-chief for ACM Transactions on Quantum Computing, Associate Editor for Quantum Information Processing, and co-chair of the IEEE Quantum Initiative. Travis also holds a joint faculty appointment with the University of Tennessee Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education working with students on energy-efficient computing solutions. Travis received a doctorate in theoretical chemistry from the University of Oregon before joining ORNL in 2005.
Awards
2016 Department of Energy Office of Science Early Career Research Program
2017 ORNL Significant Event Award for Setting a World Record in Quantum Communication
2018 Department of Energy Office of Science Basic Energy Sciences program office for Materials and Chemical Sciences Research for Quantum Information Science
2018 Department of Energy Office of Science High-energy Physics program office for QuantISED
2019 Federal Laboratory Consortium Excellence in Technology Transfer Award for "Qrypt Licensing of Quantum Random Number Generator from ORNL"
2019 Department of Energy Office of Science Advanced Computing Research Program Office Accelerated Research in Quantum Computing award
2020 ORNL Significant Event Award for “First Applications-Inspired Quantum Computer Performance Benchmark Realizing Chemical Accuracy”
2020 Best Paper Award for "Characterizing the Stability of NISQ Devices" at IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering, with Samudra Dasgupta
2023 Best Paper Award for "Noise-Resilient and Reduced Depth Approximate Adders for NISQ Quantum Computing" at IEEE Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI with Bhaskar Gaur and Himanshu Thapliyal
2024 Best Paper Award for "Visual Analytics of Performance of Quantum Computing Systems and Circuit Optimization" at the ISVLSI Workshop on Quantum Computing with Junghoon Chae and Chad Steed
2024 R&D100 Award for "MAQ: Machine Learning on Adiabatic Quantum Computers" with Prasanna Date, Kathleen Hamilton, Robert Patton, and Thomas Potok
Trademarks and Patents
2015 US Patent Award #9,172,698 System and Method for Key Generation in Security Tokens
2009 US Patent Award #12/424,957: Tampering detection system using quantum-mechanical systems