Icelandic by birth, British-educated (by way of Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan and Canada), proficient in Chinese and classical violin, an avid cook who also practices meditation: at the young age of 29, Hlér Kristjánsson has a touch of the rare bird about him.
The fact that, in his professional life, he’s also a computer scientist specializing in quantum theory and quantum foundations, including quantum machine learning, also places him in a widening group of global-minded scientists who’ve set their sights clearly on the future.
In January, Hlér joined Université de Montréal’s Department of Computer Science and Operational Research as an assistant professor affiliated with Mila – Quebec AI Institute, and in June became the third to be awarded a research chair at UdeM’s Courtois Institute.
His goal here, as he puts it, is “to advance fundamental research at the intersection of quantum computing, AI and materials science,” with an emphasis on “understanding foundational concepts in quantum information such as causality.”
More importantly, he strives to “leverage this understanding to rigorously demonstrate quantum advantages in information processing tasks such as quantum algorithms for simulating physical systems, quantum communication, and quantum machine learning.”
We caught up with the budding computer scientist this summer and, in 10 questions, asked him about his background, his career, what brought him to UdeM, and what he hopes to achieve here.