Self-described “quantum mechanic” Seth Lloyd, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT and an SFI external professor, is the Institute’s second Miller Scholar. He will be in residence at the Cowan campus from July 19 to September 1.

Former Institute Board Chair Bill Miller is underwriting the Miller Scholars program to bring to SFI senior academics whose research spans the physical sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The goal is to catalyze scientific interactions and crystallize ongoing research activities at SFI.

Daniel Dennett, renowned philosopher of science, consciousness, and evolutionary theory, was the first Miller Scholar in spring 2010.

Lloyd’s research centers on the interplay of information with complex systems, especially quantum systems. He has made contributions to the field of quantum computation and proposed a design for a quantum computer.

In his book “Programming the Universe,” he contends that the universe itself is one big quantum computer producing what we see around us, and ourselves, as it runs a cosmic program. Once we understand the laws of physics completely, he says, we will be able to use small-scale quantum computing to understand the universe completely as well.

Lloyd is principal investigator at the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics and directs the Center for Extreme Quantum Information Theory (xQIT) at MIT.

More about Lloyd is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Lloyd