Quantum for Billionaires?

I have not laughed-out-loud so much recently (and even more than during Monica O My Darling, which when first streamed, was the most watched movie on Netflix) as I did watching (also streaming on Netflix):

An Action Hero is a 2022 Indian Hindi-language action film directed by debutant Anirudh Iyer and written by Neeraj Yadav, on the basis of an original story by Iyer.

Having just returned from India, I am really missing the wonderful breakfast at the Taj – Aloo Poori, Masala Upma, Masala Omelette, Chole Bhature, Uthappam – and I had intended to title the post Breakfast at Taj.☺️

Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a 1961 American romantic comedy film directed by Blake Edwards starring Audrey Hepburn.Nominated for five Academy Awards, it won two: Best Original Score, Best Original Song.

This quiet and leisurely weekend, like Montaigne I was leafing “now through one book, now through another, without order and without plan, by disconnected fragments,” and found myself, first curious about the new McLaren Artura (Dan Neil’s Rumble Seat in WSJ; no, I am swapping my 570S) and then skimming the Annual Endowment reports – from IIT-Madras, where I have endowed an Institute Chair and also created the Tayur Prize, and from CMU [Making Possible] – when I received an unexpected invitation – squarely in line with my forme maistresse of being an Academic Capitalist – from the Chief Investment Officer at QuantBot Technologies [KaRma, Treasure at the Top of the Pyramid]:

Hi Sridhar:

Happy New Year.

Our strategic investor, Schonfeld, is organizing an offsite for all their investment managers in Miami from March 6 – March 7, 2023.

They were asking for suggestions for speakers who could talk about computing topics related to quantitative finance. Quantum computing in finance is a topic that sounded interesting to them. If you are available it would be great to have you give a talk at the event.

For folks unfamiliar with Billionaires, Steven Schonfeld is the founder of:

Schonfeld Strategic Advisors (also known as Schonfeld and SSA) is an American hedge fund based in New York City. Formed in 1988, it was a pioneer in systematic and algorithmic trading. It has over $15 billion under management.

Ah, Miami. My first time there was in 1988 – spent a week, after finishing the PhD Qualifying Exam at Cornell, in nearby Fort Lauderdale with my IIT-Madras classmates who were graduate students at FAU, which they said stood for Find Another University 😏. In 2005, I was there to close a SmartOps software deal with Hewlett-Packard Latin America (HPLA), and again, in 2011, for SmartOps Annual Forum (at the Ritz-Carlton, on South Beach, with a customer appreciation dinner at Versace Mansion). In 2019, I was there for the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS) State-of-the-Art Conference [Fix the Mix].

I would not have predicted that Miami would be a location that intersected with all three of my major professional pre-occupations:

Supply Chains. Organ Transplantation. Quantum Computing.

What happened to the 2022 Tayur Prize announcement that was to take place last week while I was at the IIT-Madras Progress in Quantum Science and Technology Conference? We decided to move it by one year to allow the students to have access to the new IBM 433 qubit machine (and test their algorithms on it) and co-ordinate with the next IBM Quantum Challenge. Indeed, IBM has been pushing hard on Quantum – a recent Time Magazine cover article is almost entirely on IBM.

You know [What would Steve Jobs Do? and Roll over Turing] that I am quite skeptical of this IBM-Google hype and I have crafted a prayer – Quantum Serenity – and so was quite relieved that (in the email to Schonfeld team organizing the event) it was correctly made clear that:

Professor Tayur has deep interest in quantum inspired computing and is very actively involved in cutting-edge research in that space. He has graciously accepted to deliver a talk on Quantum Computing in Quantitative Finance at the Schonfeld event in Maimi on March 6.

Five years ago, when I decided to get into Quantum Computing (over a Dirty Vodka Martini at Jake &Joe’s in Waltham, on a whim, not unlike when, in 2010, I conceived of OrganJet) little did I know that [A Floquet Connection]:

I was skating towards where the buck was going to be.😂

I am reminded (again) of Pablo Picasso:

I begin with an idea and it becomes something else.

Now back to the really important stuff: Movies. ☺️ Yes, I have already purchased in advance tickets (opening February 17^th) for:

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is an upcoming American superhero film based on Marvel Comics featuring the characters Scott Lang / Ant-Man and Hope Pym / Wasp where they go on a new adventure exploring the Quantum Realm.