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Scott Aaronson        

Schlumberger Chair of Computer Science at the University of Texas & Founding Director of its Quantum Information Center

Scott Aaronson is Schlumberger Chair of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin (UT), and founding director of its Quantum Information Center, currently on leave at OpenAI to work on theoretical foundations of AI safety. Prior to coming to UT, Aaronson taught Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT for nine years. His primary area of research is theoretical computer science, and his research interests center around the capabilities and limits of quantum computers, and computational complexity theory more generally.

Aaronson is known for his blog "Shtetl-Optimized" and the essay "Who Can Name The Bigger Number?" The essay was widely distributed in academic publications for computer science; he has also been published in Science News, New Scientist, The New York Times, and Forbes magazine. He also authored the book "Quantum Computing Since Democritus."

A graduate of Cornell University, Aaronson earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the recipient of the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award, the United States PECASE Award, the Tomassoni-Chisesi Prize in Physics, and the ACM Prize in Computing, and is a Fellow of the ACM and the AAAS.

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