Quantum Bits, Microchips and JK Rowling!

Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme, interviews Winfried Hensinger, Professor of Quantum Technologies and Head of the Ion Quantum Technology Group Sussex University. Hensinger has created the first practical blueprint for a super quantum computer. We found out how this master plan to construct a large-scale quantum computer has the potential to change our world.

As with all ideaXme’s interviews, this conversation will appeal to both the experts who work within the field, as well as the general public, that is, “all those who love big ideas and great stories”.

Time stamps: Jump to the areas that interest you!

• 2:20 – 12.10 The first blueprint for a super quantum computer.
• 24:30 What is happening next?
• 25:17 Transitioning from a university to an industrial approach.
• 32:31 Government investment in quantum technology.
• 38.01 How could Brexit affect the future of the high tech industry in this country?
• 38.30 Professor Hensinger’s human story.
• 43:37 Who would Professor Winfried Hensinger like to meet?
• 45.13 Advice to all those setting out to create a disruptive idea.

Scroll down for the full transcript with time stamps.

In January 2018, ideaXme launched its exponential technology category to evaluate the impact of exponential technologies on humans. Published here, for the first time is the transcript of our interview. The filmed interview is available on ideaXme’s YouTube channel. If you’d like to access this interview at a later date on mobile, it is available on iTunes, SoundCloud and Spotify.

Further to the interview, Professor Hensinger co-authored a popular science book What’s Next?: Even Scientists Can’t Predict the Future – or Can They? – an informative look at the future for the human race.

He has written a chapter on quantum computing and explains how this cutting-edge research is predicted to influence the future.

The super computer will have the potential to solve problems that are currently unsolvable. The production of this machine may take as little as 10 years. Professor Hensinger and his team have begun work on constructing the prototype quantum computer at the University of Sussex.

The ideaXme interview with Professor Winfried Hensinger

Andrea Macdonald: [00:00:00] It is lovely to meet you. Who are you?

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:00:03] Thank you. My name is Professor Winfried Hensinger. I am Head of Sussex Ion Quantum Technology Group and I am Director of Sussex Quantum Technologies. I have, together with an international team, just created a blueprint for a super quantum computer. It is a very powerful machine. We are in the process of actually constructing such a big machine.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:00:37] You made all of this public at the beginning of this year. You have come up with a new method for building a large-scale quantum computer. It is modular but it is modular with a few very important variations on other modular blueprints. Could you talk about that please?

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:00:40] Maybe I should start with saying how hard it is to build a quantum computer. The reason why it’s so hard to build a quantum computer is because of atoms, which we use to encode quantum information, have to be held inside a tremendously good vacuum, a better vacuum than exists in outer space.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:01:19] We then hold these atoms using electric fields on top of a microchip. And this microchip allows us not to just hold the atoms there, but they levitate above the surface of the chip and we can move them around and by moving them around across this microchip we are able to build a large-scale quantum computer.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:01:40] People around the world have tried for many years to build quantum computers. One of the ideas was to come up with a modular approach. You need a modular approach because if you wanted to have a quantum computer which can tackle really difficult problems, you need a lot of quantum bits. Only so many can sit on a single module, so you have to have multiple modules in order for that to work.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:02:09] Traditionally, people wanted to make these modules by transferring the quantum state, the quantum state is the information on every atom.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:02:20] You have to transfer the quantum state from an Ion, which holds the quantum state on a chip, onto a photon and you have to send it via an optical fiber to the next module. Unfortunately, the world record of achieving that is only 7 per second. So, that is a very slow process to change the quantum state for one atom to a photon and send it over to another module. And what we have developed is a new approach to make quantum computers modular, where instead of using these optical fibers, you use electric fields to transport Ions, charged atoms which hold quantum information, from one module to another.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:03:01] In doing so, we can achieve a connection speed which is 100,000 times faster than what can be achieved so far using these photons or light to connect these modules.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:03:17] What has the scientific community’s reaction to this been? There are a number of organizations out there, a number of high level scientists who have created blueprints for quantum computers. What has the reaction been from the scientific community?

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:03:34] Ours was the very first blueprint in the world to construct a large-scale quantum computer. This is why there has been so much excitement, not just with the general public but particularly from scientists. Scientists have spent the last 10 years doing very fundamental physics in order to make quantum computers work. This has been the first time that somebody has been bold or crazy or both, to ask the question “Is it possible now with current technology to build a large-scale quantum computer?”

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:04:05] So, that’s what we have done and it was very good to get a very warm reception for this achievement. One of the things we have done in order to make sure we deposited this idea for three years is to put it on a server, an instrument where other scientists can just look at these ideas and evaluate them.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:04:34] So, we asked other scientists for a long time to really find holes in this idea. We’ve asked, please be critical. Please find a mistake. So, for some time we got a lot of ideas from other scientists, who said, “Ok, you need to look for that. Have you checked this? Have you looked for power dissipation in the machine?”

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:04:48] So, we added all of this together and then in order to have it published, it was sent for reviews, so other scientists have had to evaluate it. They, in turn have given us more feedback. And with all of this feedback, we have been able to come up with this plan. And this is not just a plan which we at the University of Sussex have achieved. This has been our international collaboration with scientists from Google, Riken University and Siegen University. So, this team of people have been able to come up with this. I would call it a collaboration.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:05:37] So, you would absolutely dispute that anybody else has reached this stage in the process?

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:05:45] Building quantum computers are very difficult and tremendously exciting to get together. So, not a single person around the world can just go ahead and single handedly build such a machine. So, the way science works is, there’s groups around the world who contribute tremendous things in order to make this happen. So, we have actually taken a lot of these achievements of other scientists and worked together with other scientists in order to produce something which is exciting. It is really an effort where everybody works together. Obviously, everybody like in any other field has their favourite method or technique.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:06:39] I should tell you more about quantum computing, so that my answer addresses your question. Over the last 20 years people have tried to build quantum computers using a whole range of various technologies. If you look around the world you’ll find different scientists using different technologies, aiming to get to this holy grail for having a functional quantum computer.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:07:07] In the last few years the thinking has been crystallized that there are two main technologies which have really amazing specifications and real potential. That is, super conducting circuits, qubits (quantum bits) and trapped Ions. What I should say is that other technologies do exist. People are working incredibly hard to make these other technologies work. So, in life there is never just one way, there are many different ways. Building a quantum computer is unbelievably hard. So, at this point these two technologies – super conducting circuits and trapped Ions are really leading the field. But you never know, maybe another technology will overtake and there are many scientists working on other technologies.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:07:47] So. Maybe we should compare super conducting qubits and trapped Ions? The key thing that you need to know is that these two technologies are very likely to produce a quantum computer.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:08:04] Now, you have to make choices in life. When you are trying to achieve something unbelievably hard, you just have to make a choice. The choice I made was to investigate trapped Ions. The reason why I made this choice is because, with super conducting qubits you have to cool the qubit, the actual microchip all the way down to -273.15 degrees Celsius. Imagine cooling something that low! And it actually can be done.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:08:36] People have got amazing results with this and have made quantum computers with 10 or 15 qubits. But now the question is, “How are you going to go ahead if you want millions and millions of qubits?

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:08:48] What I always found very challenging to imagine was having a fridge, which allows us to have billions of qubits cooled to -273.15 degrees Celsius. There are some really amazing scientists around the world trying to achieve exactly that and they have my greatest support and admiration in trying to do this. It is really great work. However, what we aim to do is use a technology that works at room temperature.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:09:20] Obviously, there are other big challenges with this technology. It doesn’t mean that one thing is really terribly easy and one thing is terribly hard. But we recently achieved a few things. One is this modularization approach. And the other innovation I will tell you about in a second, as this will take a little while to explain. But using these two things, we believe will make it a lot easier to build a quantum computer.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:09:46] Let me tell you about the second achievement because that is also very important. The second achievement relates to how we make computations in a quantum computer. Now, let’s start with a conventional computer. In a conventional computer, you have a processor. Inside this processor, you carry out gates, logical gates done in a transistor.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:10:15] A binary system.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:10:16] Yes, a binary system. In a quantum computer, the equivalent is quantum gates. Trapped Ion quantum computer scientists built such quantum gates by aligning two laser beams with the accuracy of one hundredth of the width of a human hair onto a position on these Ions. In doing that, they have actually achieved the world leading results right now. No other physical system achieved something better. But the question is, “How hard will it be to build a quantum computer using this technique?” This is what many people said, “Hey, this is going to be so hard, so that’s why we’re using super conducting qubits.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:10:51] What we have recently achieved is so significant because we can take all of these laser beams away and instead execute quantum gates by applying voltages to a microchip. That makes it a lot easier. Does it make it easy? Not at all. Will we have a large-scale quantum computer in a year’s time? Definitely not.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:11:18] But it now makes it feasible to think about what kind of engineering would be involved in building a large machine. That’s what we have done with this first blueprint or construction plan to build a large-scale quantum computer. We have published an approach, how using these technologies, you could build a large quantum computer. This is what we are really excited about. This is our baby and we are very proud of what we regard as a real engineering solution to make this happen.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:11:46] Coming back to your original question, “What do other scientists think about this?” I think that other scientists are first of all excited about this, the same way as I am excited about all the other things people do in the world. Now, will they stop, drop everything they do and do what we do I don’t think so, because they obviously have other technologies which they believe in and that’s a great thing. There’s nothing wrong with it.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:12:10] Quantum computers are a means, a machine that will do certain things that will change all of our lives. So, even though I am very excited about these new technologies we’ve developed. It’s still very hard. So, it is right that you continue to try to use different means to try to build a quantum computer. Because who knows maybe in a year’s time, there will be something new.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:12:41] Scientists tend to be very respectful of other people’s work because we know how hard these things actually are. So, I don’t say “Okay, only my solution is the very best and nothing anybody else is doing is good. I consider that a very stupid approach. It doesn’t take into consideration how naive humans are in technology evolution. You cannot predict what is going to happen in five years’ time on the experimental system.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:13:09] So, I think we’ve done something really big in coming up with our plan and more importantly we are ready to start with the engineering to build it. But that doesn’t mean that we should stop trying to investigate all the other systems to build a super quantum computer because the scientists involved in using the other systems may have amazing breakthroughs. This is how humanity progresses.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:13:35] In our laboratory, we draw from other groups around the world. There are amazingly smart scientists from around the world who are responsible for groundbreaking achievements in this field and their shared knowledge is used in this construction plan.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:13:45] So, this is not a competition of egos to see who has the biggest muscles. We are trying to make difference to the world. We are trying to create a technology that will make a big difference.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:14:10] What will the applications of quantum computing be?

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:14:11] Think of a quantum computer, not as a fast computer. They are very different machines. Quantum computers may be able to do some things that a conventional computer would take billions of years to calculate. So, you will use a quantum computer, not to do word processing, not to send your emails and you won’t have it at home to play computer games.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:14:36] Quantum computers will have quantum computing algorithms, software that will allow you to do certain things that a classical computer could never do. Let me give you a few examples. So, one of the things a quantum computer can do really well is factorize a number.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:14:53] So, everybody can do that in their head. But if I give you a large number it is difficult. A conventional computer cannot factorize a large number. This is really important because, for example, when you buy something on the Internet and you put your credit card details on the website, your credit card details are encoded using a process called RSA Encoding. This is only safe because it is so difficult for conventional computers to factorize a large number.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:15:24] Now, a quantum computer could break this encoding. And this is just one example but there are many more algorithms. For example, there are algorithms to optimize for optimization problems. So, if you can imagine, there are many problems in life and you have to optimize things. For example, if you are a courier company and want to make lots of deliveries. You have to ask yourself, “What is optimal route?” A quantum computer is very good at providing a solution for problems like this.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:16:02] Another example is in ‘search’, where a quantum computer can search for a data set faster, much faster than a classical computer. In my personal opinion, the most exciting thing about a quantum computer is that the actual world around us behaves according to quantum physics. It helps to understand the things around you, for example, how molecules interact with each other, why my t shirt is this colour or why material is strong or very conductive. All of these things derive themselves from the quantum dynamics within the material.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:16:44] So, a quantum computer can understand processes. We can envision that a quantum computer could be used to create new pharmaceuticals, to understand chemical reactions and processes in biology. This is why quantum computers are really exciting.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:17:00] Just to give you a better understanding. You have to ask yourself right now, “Where are we right now in the development of the technology?”. So, if you go back to the 1940s, there were only about five computers in the world and fifty programmers. “How many programmers are there today?”

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:17:22] Millions. There are thousands in London alone. Right now, there are about fifty people writing quantum algorithms. The biggest universal quantum computer has 15 qubits. So, you can see where we are with this technology. Applications grow as the machine grows. It is the same as conventional computers. Nobody knew in the 1940’s that we’d have a conventional computer in our pocket and use it as a phone.

Nobody knew that there would be computers in ticket machines. Nobody knew that we’d have medical imaging and be able to image cancer in tissue. So, unimaginable things will come out of the development of these new algorithms. We are very naive these days. We will learn what is possible, what the application of the new technology is, as we have more people developing quantum algorithms. So, it is difficult to tell what this technology will look like.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:18:09] And hence how people will interact with it?

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:18:24] Yes. Let me elaborate. So, right now the biggest quantum computer is 10, 15 qubits. We are currently in the process of trying to build a large-scale quantum computer, with millions of qubits. That’s going to take at least 10 years, maybe 15 years to build. If you want to build a large-scale computer, it could be as big as a football pitch. That’s actually the same size as one of the biggest super computers which already exists.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:18:56] So, we already have big computers. Obviously, you are not going to have one at home, as they are going to be unbelievably expensive. So, what you will do instead is to log on from your computer at home and use that machine. And then you will run the program. You will use it for something that a classical computer cannot do.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:19:34] So, you are going to solve some complex problems with a quantum computer. If you have a company for example and want to offer a service none of your competitors can offer and there is a quantum algorithm for that, then that’s why you’ve run that on a quantum computer. That may well give you a big advantage because, as I said in the beginning, quantum computers are not made to speed things up, they are meant to do things which you couldn’t do before. This is what you’d use them for. To solve a calculation which you couldn’t solve before. You’ll be able to make something which you couldn’t make before. You’ll be able to understand something that you couldn’t before.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:20:10] These are very disruptive changes. When I grew up, I learnt to type on a typewriter. Nowadays, people smile if you say this. Life has totally changed. You bought printed cardboard tickets then and now we have electronic ticket machines. Life is totally different. Computers, the Internet and emails have changed things. As you know we have electronic cameras. Computers have really disrupted and changed our lives.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:20:45] Quantum computers offer completely new opportunities. You won’t get your train ticket twice as fast. It is likely to be a conventional computer for that. But what you will do is, you will be able to do certain things that you could not do before. It will change our lives.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:21:22] Can you talk about the very basic level science of quantum physics. What is quantum physics?

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:21:23] In one sentence. It is really weird! That’s a very good definition of quantum physics. Einstein called it spooky. In fact, he tried to disprove it because quantum physics has some very strange predictions. It has a prediction that an atom can be in two places at the same time. Imagine, you can be standing here right now and you can also be at home having breakfast. So, this is actually possible in quantum physics. It is not a mad theory. I have done an experiment where I have made an atom appear in two different places. The reason why we don’t see this around us is that as soon as something interacts with you, we say that it collapses your quantum state. It projects you into this classical state of just standing here.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:22:28] But if you go on an atomic level, you can work with individual atoms so that nothing interacts with them and then they exhibit these very strange quantum dynamics. This is the essence of what a quantum computer does, in effect a quantum computer changes these very strange phenomena. It uses them for good purpose, human computations. The way it does it, is like this. So, take two classical bits. So, you can write information on two classical bits.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:23:28] Imagine you have two bits. Imagine you write either 01 into your two bits, or could write 00 or 10, you have to make a choice. So, assume you write 01 into your two classical bits. If you have two quantum bits because they can be both things at the same time they can be 00, 10, 01 and 11. All at the same time. That is the really mad thing about it. It is not either or. They are all there at the same time. With two qubits, you get four numbers whereas with two classical bits you only get one number. Imagine if you had ten qubits, how many combinations you could get out of these and that gives rise to the amazing power of a quantum computer.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:24:30] So, you have started working on a prototype. What is happening next? You have mentioned in a number of your media interviews that you are trying to get the involvement of industry in terms of investment. How do you persuade industry and what sectors of the industrial world are you targeting, presumably to say if you invest in this, you are going to reap the benefit in area X?

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:24:42] It is not so much about the money. I think that a lot of people would give a lot of money to have a quantum computer. The key thing in building a quantum computer is not so much getting the money but having the right partners. Our microchips are currently made by our PhD students and even though they are unbelievably good, only 50% will work every single time. If you go to Intel, you’ll have a facility. At Intel, all the microchips are fantastically well produced because that is what they specialize in. The yield is high. If you build a large-scale machine, you can’t operate as a university group any more. You have to have companies involved.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:25:17] We are transitioning from having a university group approach to an industrial approach. It is not so much about the money. It’s about finding partners, who have capabilities, for example to produce microchips with a higher yield. But also, the key thing is I would never want the money unless I can ensure that this technology is used for the right purpose.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:25:46] I don’t want to have one party that says, “Okay, we’re going to throw all this money at the project but it’s all our technology, 50% is our technology and we are going to use it to make something which may not be of interest to everybody”. Quantum computers are a very powerful technology. I envision, a model like a Unix Operating System, where people work together. I would like to ensure that this technology is properly available. So, this in a way makes it a little bit harder for us because we don’t want people who partner with us just to give us money. We want them to share our approach. That means, we don’t want people who have used this technology to produce a new medicine to say, “Okay, we are going to sell this medicine for £5,000 because we have the rights”.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:27:02] So, what we want to do in commercializing the technology, is not just to have the resources but to have the right partners. Maybe, to find people who’d really like to make a difference. Who have ambition to do something positive in the world.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:27:07] Can you mention any names?

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:27:17] Not at this point. I have friends following this approach but I wouldn’t necessarily want to mention names. We are just at the starting point. We work with a lot of companies. We have some very positive relationships. I think these are big decisions. We are considering working with a broad group of supporters, so that it is not a financial burden on one.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:27:56] Whilst we may have made a significant step in producing our blueprint towards making the production of a quantum computer a lot easier, it is not something you should be putting all your savings into yet. It may never work. It is an unbelievably difficult technology to develop. Instead, I told you at the beginning of the interview that we hope to build it in 10 years’ time. If we end up taking 20 years, I’ll still a very happy man. It is not something where you can just guarantee a quick return. So, the right investor has to understand it is by no means guaranteed what we will have at the end of this process to build a quantum computer, or in fact how long it will take to do so.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:29:18] I think maybe the perfect person would be somebody like me, generally excited about new technology involved, maybe also with business acumen. This is a very expensive thing. We are talking with a lot of people. There is some interest. We want to find the right partners and don’t want to unnecessarily rush things.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:30:07] We are building this prototype in the next two years and we have a whole two years. So, we have a whole two years to go through this process.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:30:17] So, you have started to build this prototype and it is being constructed at Sussex University? When complete, how big will it be?

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:30:18] It will fill a laboratory, a whole room. So, in this exhibition that we are standing outside at Spitalfields, we have a model of the prototype. This is why we came to London, to update the public, invite them into our exhibition and show them that physics isn’t boring.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:30:35] We are here to show people that, in fact physics can be unbelievably cool. We trap individual atoms. We show a little of the prototype technology but it is of course by no means complete. As stated, we hope that we will have completed this within two years.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:32:09] We have a few schools coming here to look at this technology. There’s nothing better than seeing kids get excited about this. When I was a kid I was really excited about this. I was a nightmare for my teachers. I would keep on asking questions until they really hated me.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:32:31] So, in being here at Spitalfields we want to get people really excited about this technology and allow them to immerse themselves. We want to show people that we are not just a dry academic institution. We use tax payer’s money and we want to show people what we are doing with it. I think it is important to come out and say, “Look at these amazing things”. None of this would have happened if government had not invested two or three years ago quite a substantial amount of money in UK quantum technology.

This country is good at high tech and what the government has done recently is not just to help support academic research but help us to move into the commercial domain. They encourage us to work with commercial companies. They want us to use our academic expertize to build wealth for the country and that is another reason why we’re here to say, “Hey, this is quantum technology it might be useful for you”.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:36:13] We can’t just spend tax payer’s money. We have to justify it. We would also like in being here to encourage more kids to study physics. Don’t forget that the kids in high school now will be the ones working on creating the super quantum computer in ten to fifteen years’ time. So, I am here to say it is not just about boring math’s, you can do amazing things with this knowledge.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:36:17] So, you have the support of the government in doing what you do. You work for a fantastic university. Are there any barriers to achieving what you have set out to do? If you could change something that would open the gates a little bit more, what would it be?

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:36:18] What change would I like to see? I am very content. I am in a very exciting place. It is probably the most exciting time of my life because we are really on the verge of building these machines. There are always things that could be improved upon. What we do is really hard. I’d like more good people.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:38:01] Has Brexit affected you at all?

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:38:01] We are watching it very carefully. I have been very lucky. I have an unbelievably good bunch of students. It is very important that whatever happens that people perceive Britain as opening the doors. What I would like to say is that in order for Britain to be a high-tech nation we need great minds and we need to make it easy for them to come here. There are of course many philosophical considerations about Brexit. I feel we are always going to be better off as a big team drawing from a big pool of people.

I am personally hoping that it will be a soft Brexit but at the end of the day we are just going to have to make the best out of the opportunities. I think that the key message is, whatever happens, “Let’s keep the door open!”. We need to keep the door open, so that we can get the very best people. The technology will not advance unless we have the very best people working on it.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:38:30] We are standing here in Spitalfields with your quantum computer installation. The primary objective in being here is to reach out to the general public. With this in mind, you have this great passion for physics. Can you tell us what sparked this passion and talk a little about your human story, that is, how you arrived at this point in your life?

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:41:21] As a young child, I wanted to be the science officer on the Starship Enterprise. I wasn’t a Trekkie in that sense but loved developing technology. In grade 5, I already knew that I would study physics. I always knew what I wanted to do. My mum always said, “You asked a hole in my stomach”, which is a German saying.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:42:26] I worked in America for 3 years and entirely unexpectedly got a job offer from University of Sussex. I never expected to end up in Brighton but I love it here. It is a beautiful place, right on the beach. So that is how I ended up here. I like things that are difficult. I like to stick it to people sometimes when they say that you can’t do something!

Andrea Macdonald: [00:42:28] To show them that you can?

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:43:33] Oh yes, absolutely!

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:43:34] So, there is a competitive edge?

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:43:34] Yes. Particularly, when people say it can’t be done. You get conservative people who are slow to adopt new thinking. In fact, during my PhD a colleague looked at my experiments and said that this can’t be done and God that made me work three times as hard and then my boss in America said this is never going to work and God that really got me going.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:43:37] He did you a favour?

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:43:37] Yes absolutely. In both cases, it worked eventually.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:43:37] You’ve met an enormous amount of people doing the work that you do. Particularly, recently with the world’s media being after you further to you publicizing your blueprint for the first super quantum computer. You have been on pretty much every television station and in every newspaper across the world. Who out of everybody you could meet in the world would you like to meet and what question would you like to ask that person?

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:43:37] JK Rowling. I am entirely and completely addicted to Harry Potter books. When they came out, I would read them immediately. Her imagination, her spirit really moves me. I love the things that she does and says. JK Rowling would be for me the most interesting person to meet.

I would love to give her a tour of my lab and sit down for a whole afternoon and get her view of things in life. I don’t have a particular question but I am really impressed by her innate goodness. I think that she is one of those people who is a really good person. She very much impresses me, so I would pick her.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:45:13] As a final point to all those people listening/watching/reading this interview who have a dream they’d like to pursue, particularly to those who have been told that what you are trying to achieve is impossible. What would you say to them?

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:45:13] When people tell you it’s impossible it’s so much more fun to stick it to them. So, you should just go for it. Don’t ever believe anybody who tells you that you can’t do it. But you must have the passion to achieve your dreams. You have to love what you do. Don’t ever listen to people who discourage you. People tend to be just afraid of change. Just follow your dreams. You are going to live for a long time. Life expectancy is increasing. You are wasting your time if you go for something a too safe. Be a bit daring! Be prepared to work really hard for it. Nothing ever came easily to me.

I have had to work unbelievably hard. I pushed the limits. I think that is what you should do. Don’t always go for the safe option, go with something that really inspires you. And if someone says it can’t be done just smile politely and go back and stick to them five years later when you have achieved your objective. So, do what you dream about but also understand that everybody has their talents. My talent is quantum physics. Other people’s talents might be playing the guitar. Our individual talents don’t make us better people, they just make us different people.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:47:49] Winfried Hensinger, it has been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you very much for your time.

Professor Winfried Hensinger: [00:47:49] Thank you. It was lovely!

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Credits: Andrea Macdonald interview video, text, and audio

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