| John Harrison Watrous | |
| Field: | Computer Science, Quantum Computing |
| Work Institution: | University of Calgary University of Waterloo Institute for Quantum Computing Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics |
| Alma Mater: | University of Wisconsin–Madison State University of New York at Stony Brook |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Eric Bach |
John Harrison Watrous is the Technical Director of IBM Quantum Education at IBM and was a professor of computer science at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo, a member of the Institute for Quantum Computing, an affiliate member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.[1] [2] He was a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Calgary from 2002 to 2006 where he held a Canada Research Chair in quantum computing.
He is an editor of the journal Theory of Computing[3] and former editor for the journal Quantum Information & Computation.[4] His research interests include quantum information and quantum computation. He is well known for his work on quantum interactive proofs, and the quantum analogue of the celebrated result IP = PSPACE: QIP = PSPACE.[5] [6] [7] This was preceded by a series of results, showing QIP can be constrained to 3 messages,[8] QIP is contained in EXP,[9] and the 2-message version of QIP is in PSPACE.[10] He has also published important papers on quantum finite automata[11] and quantum cellular automata.[12] With Scott Aaronson, he showed that certain forms of time travel can make quantum and classical computation equivalent: together, the authors showed that quantum effects do not offer advantages for computation if computers can send information to the past through a type of closed timelike curve proposed by the physicist David Deutsch.[13]
He obtained his Ph.D. in 1998 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison under the supervision of Eric Bach.[14] [15]