From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/6802 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Bob Coecke Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: quantum of critic Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:28:48 +0100 (BST) Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Bob Coecke NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; format=flowed; charset=ISO-8859-15 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1311177689 9081 80.91.229.12 (20 Jul 2011 16:01:29 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 16:01:29 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Timothy Porter , categories To: =?ISO-8859-15?Q?Joyal=2C_Andr=E9?= Original-X-From: majordomo@mlist.mta.ca Wed Jul 20 18:01:24 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from smtpy.mta.ca ([138.73.1.128]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1QjZD9-0004C7-Ma for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:01:24 +0200 Original-Received: from mlist.mta.ca ([138.73.1.63]:33096) by smtpy.mta.ca with esmtp (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from ) id 1QjZAn-0006os-At; Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:58:57 -0300 Original-Received: from majordomo by mlist.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QjZAm-0003DT-FE for categories-list@mlist.mta.ca; Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:58:56 -0300 In-Reply-To: Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:6802 Archived-At: Dear Andre, Tim, > Dear Tim, > > I recently heard that research on quantum computing and quantum topos > are presently generously supported in England. > > Is that right? Andr=E9 > I believe they are not doing too badly but am not directly concerned=20 > with them so perhaps Jamie or Bob could comment. > > Tim I assume that the question is about category-theory related quantum-ish=20 research. Firstly, as several UK based category theory groups are already aware of,= =20 we now have a network grant to support travel between UK category theory=20 related groups, more general travel, and events: http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=3DEP/I03596X/1 funded by EPSRC, the main British funding body, and coordinated by Samson= =20 Abramsky, Andreas Doering, Jamie Vicary and myself. (I used to fund many= =20 such events for the past five years with my personal EPSRC fellowship, bu= t=20 that is now running out) Concerning the Butterfield-Isham-Doering type topos approach to physics,=20 Steve Vickers has a decent grant from EPSRC, through their mathematics=20 panel (I think). In addition to this, Andreas Doering has PhD students i= n=20 the area funded by Oxford's Computing Laboratory. There is also funding=20 in the Netherlands for this subject. I am aware of two grants in Nijmege= n=20 (Landsman, Jacobs, Moerdijk). For the quantum computing related research that relies on monoidal=20 categories, there is quite a bit more funding, in part because of the=20 popularity of the topic of quantum computing. Both Samson Abramsky and I= =20 have five year EPSRC fellowships that buy us out of faculty duties, a=20 number of postdocs also had EPSRC fellowships, we have a number EPSRC=20 grants in the area, and many students are funded by the department or=20 university. But we are also receiving/received substantial funding from=20 EU and US sources, e.g. Office of Naval Research that also sponsors the=20 MFPS meetings, and some charitable organizations. However, currently a substantial part of the focus of our group's research is on foundations of quantum mechanics, but we complement this with actual tool design (which fundamentally draws from categorical logic): http://sites.google.com/site/quantomatic/ An example of the "impact" that this research has generated, and which=20 immediately has been recognized by EPSRC with a five year "career=20 acceleration" fellowship for Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh, is a spin-off from the=20 categorical quantum computing research to natural language processing=20 (NLP) technology. It started with a paper entitled "Mathematical=20 Foundations for a Compositional Distributional Model of Meaning": http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.4394 which made it to the cover heading of New Scientist (this indeed counts as "impact" with respect to REF): http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/bob.coecke/NewScientist.pdf This work provides an algorithm that provides meanings of sentences given= =20 meanings of words, relying on the common categorical structure of Lambek'= s=20 pregroups and the category of vector spaces (both are compact closed).=20 The inspiration came from the categorical quantum computing research:=20 "meanings of words are "teleported" within a sentence so that they can=20 interact". :) Concerning "impact" at the concrete technological end,=20 Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh and my student Ed Grefenstette produced a paper=20 entitled "Experimental Support for a Categorical Compositional=20 Distributional Model of Meaning" ("Categorical" as in Category Theory, not as in categorial grammar, which is different of course) : http://arxiv.org/abs/1106.4058 accepted for Empirical Methods in NLP, the main conference on the subject= ,=20 which shows that for certain NLP tasks the algorithm implemented in a=20 certain manner yields way better results than existing methods. While of course one can hide that category-theoretic backbone, these=20 results could never have been obtained without, and the diagrammatic=20 language for monoidal categories is a particularly useful tool here. Finally, it's probably well-known that general categorical semantics in=20 computer science has been a well-funded area in the UK for quite a while,= =20 and there are many faculty positions in the area, in Edinburgh, Cambridge= ,=20 Oxford, Manchester, Bath, Leicester, ... - best wishes, bob [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]