Kate Brown

About

Kate Brown is the Thomas M. Siebel Distinguished Professor in History of Science at MIT. Her research explores the intersection of history, science, technology, and bio-politics, focusing on how these fields converge to create large-scale disasters and modernist wastelands. She has authored four books covering diverse topics such as population politics, linguistic mapping, nuclear weapons production and related utopian communities, the health and environmental impacts of nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl disaster, and innovations in historical narrative writing in the 21st century. Currently, she is working on a manuscript titled "Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The History of the Self-Provisioning City," which traces the role of plants and urban gardeners in 20th-century urban history, emphasizing their contributions to food sustainability, nutrient recycling, and environmental remediation in Europe and North America. Brown teaches courses in environmental history, the history of food production, the history of plants and people, and seminars on narrating the Anthropocene, with a focus on creative non-fiction narrative modes in her graduate seminars. Brown's scholarship has been widely recognized with numerous prestigious awards. Her book "A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland" won the American Historical Association's George Louis Beer Prize for the best book in international European history. "Plutopia: Nuclear Families in Atomic Cities and the…

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Quantum mechanics
• Physics
• Algorithm
• Theoretical computer science
• Computational science
• Distributed computing
• Engineering
• Software engineering
• Engineering physics

Selected publications

• Quantum Simulators: Architectures and Opportunities

  PRX Quantum · 2021 · 526 citations

  Quantum simulators are a promising technology on the spectrum of quantum devices from specialized quantum experiments to universal quantum computers. These quantum devices utilize entanglement and many-particle behaviors to explore and solve hard scientific, engineering, and computational problems. Rapid development over the last two decades has produced more than 300 quantum simulators in operation worldwide using a wide variety of experimental platforms. Recent advances in several physical arc…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Fault-tolerant control of an error-corrected qubit

  Nature · 2021 · 354 citations

  DOI

• Ground-state energy estimation of the water molecule on a trapped-ion quantum computer

  npj Quantum Information · 2020 · 342 citations

  Abstract Quantum computing leverages the quantum resources of superposition and entanglement to efficiently solve computational problems considered intractable for classical computers. Examples include calculating molecular and nuclear structure, simulating strongly interacting electron systems, and modeling aspects of material function. While substantial theoretical advances have been made in mapping these problems to quantum algorithms, there remains a large gap between the resource requiremen…

  DOI

• Quantum Computer Systems for Scientific Discovery

  PRX Quantum · 2021 · 261 citations

  The great promise of quantum computers comes with the dual challenges of building them and finding their useful applications. We argue that these two challenges should be considered together, by codesigning full-stack quantum computer systems along with their applications in order to hasten their development and potential for scientific
\ndiscovery. In this context, we identify scientific and community needs, opportunities, a sampling of a few use case
\nstudies, and significant challeng…

  DOI

• Building a Quantum Engineering Undergraduate Program

  IEEE Transactions on Education · 2022 · 106 citations

  <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Contribution:</i> A roadmap is provided for building a quantum engineering education program to satisfy U.S. national and international workforce needs. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Background:</i> The rapidly growing quantum information science and engineering (QISE) industry will require both quantum-aware and quantum-proficient…

  DOI

Recent grants

• Laser Cooling of Molecular Ions

  NSF · $454k · 2014–2018

• Collaborative Research: EPiQC: Enabling Practical-Scale Quantum Computation

  NSF · $200k · 2018–2018

• MRI: Development of a Programmable Ion-Trap Quantum Computer

  NSF · $1.1M · 2018–2023

Frequent coauthors

• William E. Struble

  United States Military Academy

  49 shared

• Ralph R. Landes

  Northwestern University

  49 shared

• Lloyd H. Harrison

  Eastern Virginia Medical School

  49 shared

• Michael Hesney

  Bristol-Myers Squibb (Germany)

  49 shared

• Michael L. Corrado

  49 shared

• Robert H.K. Eng

  VA New Jersey Health Care System

  49 shared

• John B. Ryan

  University of the Sciences

  49 shared

• Jason M. Amini

  40 shared

Education

• PhD, Genetics, Evolution and Environment

  University College London

  2016

• BSc Medical Genetics (year in industry), Biological Sciences

  University of Leicester

  2011

Similar researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Kathleen Thelenh-31
• Caitlin Talmadgeh-14
• Meicen Sunh-1