Nowadays, we are witnessing a scientific revolution where Information Theory and Quantum Physics are combined and give rise to new and powerful ways of processing and transmitting information. In particular, quantum computers will be able to solve problems that are beyond the capabilities of existing supercomputers.  In this talk Prof.Ignacio Cirac will explain how those devices work, give some examples of their potential impact, and review the current efforts to build them. He will also highlight the role of imperfections in their performance, and the limitations that this will cause in the near future.

J. Ignacio Cirac is a Spanish physicist, director at Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany. He is an expert in quantum computing and communication. With his collaborators, he introduced the first theoretical proposals of quantum computing, simulation, and repeaters, and developed a theory of tensor networks to solve problems quantum physics. He studied theoretical physics and gained his PhD at the University Complutense of Madrid. After a postdoc at JILA (Boulder, US) and becoming Associate Professor at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain) he became Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Innsbruck (Austria) in 1996. Since 2001 he is director of the Theory Division at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching (Germany) and Honorary Professor at the Technical University of Munich. He is also the speaker of the International Max-Planck Research School on Quantum Science and Technology and co-speaker of the Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology. For his work he has been awarded several prizes, among them the Prince of Asturias, the BBVA frontiers of knowledge, the Benjamin Franklin Medal, the Wolf Prize, the Max-Planck Medal and the Quantum Computer Prize of the Micius Foundation. He is a member of the Spanish, Bavarian, German and US American Academies of Sciences.