A Quantum Journey of Education and Exploration
Overview:
In this episode of The Quantum Spin by HKA, host Veronica Combs speaks with Cierra Choucair, a quantum journalist and analyst at The Quantum Insider. Cierra shares her unique journey from working in data science to becoming a self-taught expert in quantum computing. She discusses the motivations behind her switch to quantum journalism and the challenges of presenting complex scientific concepts to a broader audience. The episode also delves into her founding of The Daily Qubit newsletter and her insights from the Expanse event in Abu Dhabi. Listeners will gain valuable advice on breaking into the quantum field, the importance of interdisciplinary skills, and fostering a community within the quantum industry.
00:00 Welcome to The Quantum Spin
00:36 Meet Cierra Choucair: A Quantum Journalist
00:52 The Journey to The Quantum Insider
02:51 Highlighting Research in The Daily Qubit
05:27 Educational Background and Career Path
09:01 Expanse Conference Experience
14:00 Building Community in Quantum Industry
18:09 Future Trends in Quantum Computing
21:00 Advice for Aspiring Quantum Enthusiasts
22:15 Working with the Large Hadron Collider
25:41 Conclusion and Farewell
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Veronica: Hello, and welcome to the quantum spin by HKA. I’m Veronica Combs. I’m a writer and an editor here at the agency. I get to talk every day with really smart people working on really fascinating subjects, everything in the Quantum industry, from hardware to software. On our podcast, we focus in on quantum communication, and by that I don’t mean making networks safe from hacking or entangling photons over long distance, but talking about the technology.
[00:00:26] How do you explain these complicated concepts to people who don’t have a background in science and engineering but want to understand all the same?
[00:00:36] Veronica Combs: Today I am talking to Cierra Choucair, who is a fellow journalist. I am not a journalist now, but I was one in the past, and I’m always delighted to talk to someone who’s writing in the industry.
[00:00:46] So thank you for joining us today, Cierra.
[00:00:48] Cierra Choucair: Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
[00:00:51] Veronica Combs: So you have a new job. You just joined The Quantum Insider as a quantum journalist and analyst. Tell me how you arrived there.
[00:00:58] Cierra Choucair: Yeah, that’s a really great question and it is a bit of a journey, so we might have to backtrack a little bit.
[00:01:03] About a year ago I was working at a data science company and I was analyzing data that had to do with grocery prices. It took me a lot of time to get to that position. I had to teach myself a lot of skills on the side in order to make it that far. And I was very happy to have reached that point in my career.
[00:01:23] But I realized that even though I really loved the tasks that I was doing, I didn’t necessarily feel very passionate about the topics that I was working on. And I just always have had this calling to get back to physics because I’ve spent some time away from it, and to really contribute deeply to the scientific community.
[00:01:43] And so I made this really big decision to leave this career that was rather stable and I knew the trajectory looked good, but I wanted to take a break from that and see if I could pursue other interests that were more related to my passions. And so in March of this year, I actually started writing about quantum computing through The Daily Qubit newsletter.
[00:02:04] That was more of a personal project. I figured I actually learned really well by writing. So I figured I would teach myself quantum computing and I would write about it. And if someone else had some sort of interest in it or was interested in reading it, then that would be great. And The Daily Qubit actually grew a lot more than I expected it to.
[00:02:22] And so several months in, I had the opportunity to meet with the Chief of Content, Matt Swayne, over at The Quantum Insider, and we really hit it off. As two people who are very passionate about quantum technology and also very passionate about writing. We had a really good connection. And so he invited me to look into becoming a journalist with The Quantum Insider, which is how that came about.
[00:02:46] And now I’m still here a few months later and really loving it.
[00:02:50] Veronica Combs: Wow. That’s great. And so The Daily Qubit you highlight research, right? It’s not funding or MOUs. It’s interesting research in the quantum field. So like I was looking at a recent one and it was about and addressing limitations.
[00:03:04] And I think also research about breast cancer. So give us an idea. How do you pick what you’re going to highlight in The Daily Qubit each day?
[00:03:11] Cierra Choucair: Absolutely. So when I first started, I will say that I’ve changed my strategy. In the research that I was looking for when I first started, I was new to quantum computing and I highlighted any sort of research paper that stuck out to me because I was going to highlight it.
[00:03:25] It meant that I had to actually read it. So I wanted it to be interesting and align with my own interests. Over time, I’ve come to realize that something that we come back to as a whole within the quantum community is we’re really looking for use cases that have practical applications. And so I’ve really tried to find interesting research that I think will appeal to different audiences that have practical uses. Not all of them are practical now, but can be practical in the future and will have a high impact. So each day I go through usually Nature, Physical Review Journals, and arXiv are my three go tos, and I just peruse use cases that stand out to me and I try to vary them.
[00:04:06] Yesterday we did the one on breast cancer. I also did one that highlighted spontaneous symmetry breaking for evidence of supersymmetry, which is something that is pretty interesting to me based on my past experience, and then I also have done other ones recently related to, let’s say like climate modeling or other uses with AI.
[00:04:26] So I’m really looking for varied applications that will appeal to broad audiences, but also show the many different interesting things that we can potentially do with quantum computing as the hardware continues to mature and develop.
[00:04:39] Veronica Combs: Right? Yeah. That’s a really smart approach. Sometimes our clients will have some really interesting deep research and it is really interesting, but it’s not going to get any attention from a business audience.
[00:04:49] So we do always try to do exactly what you just said, steer them back to more sort of, at least a potential use case that people could imagine using. And so the breast cancer research was about imaging, I think. Right? Yes.
[00:05:01] Cierra Choucair: Medical imaging.
[00:05:02] Veronica Combs: Yeah. We have another client who was looking at liver scans and trying to pick good candidates for transplant because I guess I didn’t know this until I read about this research that, you know, you can slice off a piece of someone’s liver and transplanted and it will grow into a full size liver.
[00:05:19] Cierra Choucair: Did not know that. That’s fascinating.
[00:05:22] Veronica Combs: That’s why I love journalism. You’re always learning something new. So yeah, that’s a good, that’s a good hook. And you studied physics at CU Boulder, right? That’s your, that’s where you first started in down that path.
[00:05:32] Cierra Choucair: So I actually first studied physics at the University of Oklahoma and my educational journey is a bit non-traditional.
[00:05:39] I’m very happy to talk about that because I think it’s important in the space. I actually originally went to school for biochemistry pre-med and after a certain amount of time, my advisor pulled me into his office and he said, Cierra, your schedule is all chemistry, analytical chemistry, physical chemistry, organic chemistry.
[00:05:56] He said I think you actually want to do chemistry. I think that’s actually where this is headed. And so I had been working on a research project at the time as a freshman, I had a scholarship and I got to work in a graduate lab and we were detecting degradation products of nerve agents and trying to figure out different methods that worked well, like how far can the nerve agents degrade before we can’t detect them anymore, essentially.
[00:06:18] And I was having the time of my life going to the chemistry lab and learning about chemistry. And so I kind of made this switch from pre-med to maybe I actually want to be in the physical sciences and I want to pursue research. And then I took my first physics class because it was required for my major and I actually failed.
[00:06:36] And it was the first class I had ever failed, and it took me a really long time to realize that physics requires a much different approach. You have to think very critically about different forces on a system. And then you have to think through how to apply different equations. It really grew me as a student and as a person. And over time, I taught myself how to do physics and I fell in love with it. So I switched over to engineering physics and I studied that at the University of Oklahoma. I completed three years before I actually had to take time away from school to take care of a family member.
[00:07:10] At the time, since I didn’t have my degree, I immediately went to work as a store manager at Starbucks and I grew my career from there. I actually taught myself how to program nights and weekends, and then I went to a software company, and then I taught myself how to do data science, and I went to a data science company, and then in March of this year, I taught myself quantum computing, and here I am, back in physics.
[00:07:32] So I actually do not have a formal degree. I did start a master’s program in computer science at the University of Colorado, Boulder, specifically for professionals who have the background but maybe not the formal education. I did take time away from that so I could focus on my career and I’ve also spent a lot of time thinking through, maybe it’s more important for me to grow my career by leaning on the skill I have of teaching myself skills so that I can show people that physics that I’m very passionate about, it’s for everybody. It’s not just for those of us who can take time away and have the opportunity to complete those formal education paths. So I, at this point in time, do not have any formal degree, but I have studied physics.
[00:08:18] Veronica Combs: Well, you’re in good company when it comes to failing physics I was talking to a professor Paul Cadden Zimansky I guess last year, he’s one of the organizers of the international year of quantum, and he shared with me that he also failed physics his first time around. So, wow. That you certainly have picked hard subjects to teach yourself.
[00:08:35] That is very inspiring. And I think that’s one of the goals of the international year of quantum to show people that it’s open to everyone and you can get there with the right mix of support and determination and curiosity for sure. So, wow, that’s an awesome story. I’m so glad I had a chance to talk with you.
[00:08:51] We were talking earlier and you just got back from Expanse in Abu Dhabi and I think this was the first one they’ve ever had, right?
[00:08:57] Cierra Choucair: Yes, this was the inaugural event. And my first time out of the U. S. So a lot of feelings coming out of Expanse.
[00:09:05] Veronica Combs: Did you speak or did you just attend as a journalist?
[00:09:07] Cierra Choucair: So, I actually had the opportunity to help with some of the creative writing that went into the event that was actually shown around the event. And I attended after having the opportunity to interview Zena, who is the visionary behind Expanse, and we got to speak a bit on our different backgrounds and how we came to really love science.
[00:09:28] And we’re both very, very passionate about just that wonder and awe that science inspires and people and how it’s for everybody. It’s not just for the select few. And so she invited me to attend and I was able to actually meet up with some of the residents of Expanse/Quantum Insider family while I was there, so that was very exciting.
[00:09:46] And I’ve been to conferences before. This was not at all like any conference I’ve ever experienced. It was very immersive and interactive. The team took a lot of time putting together what was essentially a very beautiful art installation with speakers and Nobel laureates, and it wasn’t just these technical talks about science, right? It was very interactive storytelling type talks on the many different applications within deep science and technology that have the opportunity to impact our very near future. So it was a very incredible experience. Very, very grateful that I had the opportunity to attend.
[00:10:24] Veronica Combs: And will you be writing anything about your experience there?
[00:10:28] Cierra Choucair: Yes, I do plan on writing about some takeaways that I got from some of the very inspirational talks. So something to look forward to there as well.
[00:10:35] Veronica Combs: Yeah, for sure. So, I certainly agree that explaining difficult subjects is a really good way to learn them yourself and learn how to write clearly.
[00:10:45] I think that’s the challenge for all of us when it comes to quantum, you know, not too complex that you turn people off, but not so simple that you’re not respecting the subject matter. Have you always enjoyed writing?
[00:10:56] Cierra Choucair: Yeah. I’ve enjoyed writing for a very long time. I first started writing regularly, probably about seven years ago. Part of my routine would be waking up really early. I wake up around 3 to 4 a. m. I’m a morning person through and through.
[00:11:10] My children are still sleeping. The household is peaceful. It’s very nice. And I would just spend the first hour to two hours in the morning reading and then writing about what I read. And in that way I realized that there were complex concepts that I could get to, I could understand more thoroughly than if I didn’t write about it afterwards.
[00:11:30] And it wasn’t until last year that I started considering what if I actually took this love that I have for writing and I applied it to something in public.
[00:11:40] And that’s what I did with the newsletter. And I’ve just continued to kind of sharpen that through writing for the newsletter, but also writing as a journalist for The Quantum Insider. It gives me a lot of practice. Taking various topics within quantum technology that can be very dense and very heavy with the jargon and really challenging myself to bring that back to a story that I can tell to my audience in a way that they understand the significance of what I’m trying to say, because ultimately, I think that all writing, be it fiction, nonfiction, science, or otherwise, it’s all about telling the story so that especially a topic as abstract as quantum, so that people can understand how it relates to their everyday life.
[00:12:22] Veronica Combs: Right. So is The Daily Qubit still your own independent publication or is it part of The Quantum Insider?
[00:12:29] Cierra Choucair: That’s a really good question. A few months ago, we decided to make this a partnership that we would try out. Because it made sense that The Daily Qubit would fit within the other publications that are at The Quantum Insider.
[00:12:42] And as of right now, everything has gone very successfully and we’re looking forward to exploring further extended partnerships.
[00:12:50] Veronica Combs: Great. I was reading up on the last several issues before we talked here and it is very nice.
[00:12:57] The design is great. It’s very sharp. For someone without experience in publishing, you’ve certainly applied your self teaching, self knowledge skills very well here.
[00:13:07] So do you start your day writing this or do you try to get a couple of days in advance?
[00:13:11] Cierra Choucair: It’s actually all done the day before, so you’ll see that my posting times can be a bit varied because of that. So, my morning starts out with reading and writing, and I usually go first into my publications for The Quantum Insider, because those press releases start coming out first thing and our audience is really getting to read that news.
[00:13:30] So that’s where I start my day. Once I’ve wrapped up any articles that I’m going to write for The Quantum Insider. That’s when I start really searching around to see what research really pulls to me that day and I’ll start gathering all of my links and then I’ll just start putting together the newsletter.
[00:13:45] It can be a fairly long task.
[00:13:47] Veronica Combs: Yes, it does take time and attention to detail to do it. I was reading your LinkedIn page and you talk about using technology to build community.
[00:13:55] It sounds like Expanse was sort of a community building exercise, but when you think about it more in terms of your day-to-day life, how do you think about building community within the quantum industry?
[00:14:04] Cierra Choucair: This is the 1st time that I’ve really spent a lot of time on LinkedIn posting and networking.
[00:14:13] So out of all the phases, if I look back over my career, which I’ve spent in different industries, this is the first time where I’ve really leaned into networking and chatting with people across the globe who are very passionate about quantum technology. So for me, it’s all about breaking down any barriers that we might have because we might work in different companies, or maybe we even work in different countries.
[00:14:35] And just allowing yourself the time to connect with other people who are very passionate about this technology. And something that I hear quite often from the people that I do get the opportunity to chat with is the thing about quantum is you can’t just go to your family or your friends easily and start talking to them about developments in quantum.
[00:14:52] They’re not always as interested, their eyes might glaze over a bit. So it’s really exciting to branch out and reach out to people that you might not know on LinkedIn, but who are clearly interested and have those conversations. And another thing that comes from it is you’ll notice over time that within the quantum industry itself, there are a lot of very similar struggles, whether it be, we need more people for the workforce or really interested in understanding what type of practical use cases we have.
[00:15:19] We have very similar challenges. And so that’s another way in which we can connect as a community as well.
[00:15:24] Veronica Combs: For sure. Like you said, jargon is really a way to keep people out or keep people feeling like they can’t connect over a topic like quantum computing. So, how do you think about inclusive language and ways to make sure the doors open for people to come in?
[00:15:40] Cierra Choucair: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think it’s really important when I’m writing. I always try to go back and read it as someone who might not be as acquainted with the language.
[00:15:51] So in writing, you already want to keep your writing fairly clear. So I try to remove anything that does not actually deliver value or help communicate the significance of what, what was done in the experiment or what was found in the research. If it’s not incredibly valuable to my audience, I try to remove it. Another way that I try to decrease the use of jargon is if there’s a term that I absolutely have to use, but I want to make sure my audience knows what it means. I always try to include a brief definition within a couple of words that makes it easier for them to understand what I’m talking about, or at least to kind of paint the picture of what I’m talking about.
[00:16:28] Because like I said, quantum can be very abstract and it’s hard to read that jargon for long periods of time. It can actually get quite painful after you spent some time reading all those articles. Essentially just kind of bringing it back to simple definitions and removing anything that doesn’t provide immediate value.
[00:16:45] Veronica Combs: So The Quantum Insider is part of Resonance and Resonance is an analyst firm. And I know they do a lot of data analysis and data collection.
[00:16:54] Was that part of what attracted you to the company as well? That data angle?
[00:16:57] Cierra Choucair: Yeah, so, like I mentioned, I had the chance to meet with Matt Swayne, but also I had the chance to meet with the CEO, Alex, who really discussed his vision behind Resonance as a whole, as a market intelligence type platform. And what they’re doing right now is trying to take these deep tech verticals and really start to connect data in a way that hasn’t been connected before to show trends more clearly.
[00:17:20] I am very passionate about that with a background in data science. I think that there’s a lot to be gained from looking at the bigger picture. I think it’s easy to get very zoomed in on, on, let’s say, on just funding or on just news or in just research. But when you actually bring all of these things together in deep tech, the funding, the partnerships, the research, you start to see the bigger trends within the industry, and that’s really, really important. It’s something that you can’t see with just one angle alone.
[00:17:47] Veronica Combs: So is there anything in 2025 that you’re sort of looking ahead in terms of things to keep an eye on or interesting use cases that you hope to develop anything that you’re having your writer’s notebook to keep an eye on?
[00:17:57] Cierra Choucair: There’s a lot that I’ve seen with image analysis lately, and I think that medicine, anything that’s related to medicine, so we have medicine and drug discovery and anything that involves quantum chemistry are really coming through as the first places where we expect to see that advantage. And I know really big companies such as IBM and NVIDIA or Microsoft especially are really starting to put a lot of money into investing in those types of applications and building out the technology in order to serve those applications. So I definitely see those as coming through as very, very prominent as we go into the international year of quantum. I also recently, coming out of a workshop with the QEDC, we talked a lot about quantum for AI, AI and AI for quantum and something that we’re seeing.
[00:18:40] Whereas we didn’t expect to see advantage in quantum machine learning, let’s say, even at the beginning of this year, we said maybe that might be one of the last places where we would see quantum advantage. And the reason we said that is because when it comes to artificial intelligence, you’re dealing with really vast data sets, really big data sets.
[00:18:56] And the current state of the technology means we can’t handle very large data sets. But quantum machine learning is really interesting because it actually provides a bit of an advantage when you’re dealing with very complex, highly connected, correlated data that happens to be sparse and incomplete.
[00:19:14] That’s where we start to see quantum neural networks perform over classical neural networks, and that’s starting to show through in a lot of the literature and speaking to different people who work in research. And so I expect to see more applications where we’re using quantum neural networks to analyze sparse and incomplete data sets.
[00:19:31] And there are a lot of applications that relate to that. So, very interested to see how that plays out in the upcoming year.
[00:19:36] Veronica Combs: You sound really busy and really engaged and really informed, but I know you have a few other ideas about things you’d like to work on in the industry. What are those?
[00:19:44] Cierra Choucair: I’m actually very, very interested in how scientific discovery happens. Essentially as people, we can only work off of the ideas that we have. Another motivation that I had in presenting interesting use cases within The Daily Qubit is in hopes that if people see these very, very creative ways to apply quantum computing, it will spark innovative ideas in their own mind.
[00:20:06] I think that when you listen to stories of how Nobel laureates, for instance, came up like that last puzzle piece is usually them sitting on a park bench and they’re observing something in nature, and something kind of clicks in their head. And so I love this idea of presenting lots of creative discoveries within science in a visual and interesting way and hopes that it will inspire discovery and other people, and so I will say that a lot of the projects that I’m working on right now are related to that ultimate goal.
[00:20:36] Veronica Combs: Wow, that sounds great. Do you have any advice for people who are wanting to get into quantum or do a crash course on their own?
[00:20:43] Cierra Choucair: Just jump in and go for it. Accept that you might feel uncomfortable for a time because it can be very challenging and depending on your background, it can be challenging to overcome any limitations that you might personally perceive in your own background, which for me was the formal education.
[00:20:59] But being okay with doing it for a long period of time, no matter the cost, no matter how long it takes until you reach that point of understanding, if you keep at it, then you will, you’ll be able to find a space for yourself in this industry. There is actually a lot of opportunity in quantum and there are more supportive people in this industry than I’ve experienced in others, which is very interesting to me. So just go for it If this is where your passion is then absolutely just go for it.
[00:21:25] Veronica Combs: Yes, I really identify with what you said about investing the time. That’s one thing about HKA, we do have the time to read the papers and spend time thinking about them. And, you know, you can’t really skim these things. As you know, you have to read and reread and highlight and ask good questions. And so, I’m always grateful to have the time to invest in it so that we can help people get the word out about use cases and why people should invest now.
[00:21:49] So I didn’t want to end our conversation before asking you about your work with the large Hadron collider. I don’t think I’ve talked to anyone who’s worked with that machine or that, that research team. So, tell us how that was part of your journey.
[00:22:02] Cierra Choucair: So, I mentioned earlier that I did a project in a chemistry lab and I realized that I really love the process of doing research.
[00:22:10] So when I switched my major over to engineering physics, I went in search of a professor who was willing to take on an undergraduate and be a student of physics and hoped that I would find a space for myself in one of the labs. And I was able to find one at the University of Oklahoma. And so I approached this professor who had an opening on his research team.
[00:22:29] And he told me that essentially what they do is access data remotely from the Large Hadron Collider, in Geneva. And then they analyze that data, put it into histograms and essentially seek out evidence of supersymmetry within the data itself.
[00:22:43] And he told me that I would be able to access that data and do the analysis myself. So I went into it thinking this is going to be great. This is where my career as a theoretical physicist begins. I can see it. And I really thought that theoretical physics was just, you know, spending a lot of time thinking and writing out formulas on chalkboards, you know, this very romantic picture of what it means to be a physicist.
[00:23:07] And it turns out that it’s not. Never got that chalkboard, but what he did tell me before I started the project is he said, you’re going to access this data. But before I let you do this, I want you to learn how to dual boot your computer to run Linux and you’re going to access the command terminal and you’re going to learn a little bit of Python and some C++ to do the data analysis.
[00:23:27] And I assumed at that time that those tasks would be fairly easy because I considered myself computer literate. And once I got started, I realized that I was not as computer literate as I thought I was. And the reason that he told me he wanted me to do this is because he felt that computer science was very relevant for physicists, which in hindsight, is really interesting to consider because it is very relevant for physicists and this was before Claude and ChatGPT. So I actually had to search the internet for documentation and it took me a very long time to even get past the first part of dual booting my computer to run linux. And in fact my laptop did not function quite the same after that so I’m not even sure I did it correctly. But I will say it was one of the most valuable experiences I had in my undergraduate career, not because of the opportunity to work with data from CERN, which is still very interesting, but because he taught me two things. One was that there is a lot of value in learning how to teach yourself a skill, and if you’re willing to accept that it is going to be uncomfortable for a period of time, but you accept that discomfort and you can move past it, you will get something on the other side. You can carve out a very specific skill that you can use in other parts of your life, which I did.
[00:24:45] And the second thing being that there’s a lot of value and not just putting, not just exploring one very specific facet of knowledge, but in giving yourself an interdisciplinary skill set. So in that case, it was the value of learning computer science, data science and physics and how the three actually are very complementary for one another.
[00:25:06] Veronica Combs: Wow, your journey is amazing and very impressive. I appreciate you being willing to share all the details and the learning along the way.
[00:25:14] Cierra Choucair: Thank you for having me.
Host Veronica Combs is a quantum tech editor, writer and PR professional. She manages public relations for quantum computing and tech clients as an account manager with HKA Marketing Communications, the #1 agency in quantum tech PR. You can find them on X, formerly known as Twitter, @HKA_PR. Veronica joined HKA from TechRepublic, where she was a senior writer. She has covered technology, healthcare and business strategy for more than 10 years. If you’d like to be on the podcast yourself, you can reach her on LinkedIn, Veronica Combs, or you can go to the HKA website and share your suggestion via the Contact Us page.
January 28, 2025
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