Chris Zaharia
Chris is a software engineer passionate about the intersection of neuroscience, machine learning, and quantum computing.
He’s currently a Staff Software Engineer at Q-CTRL, building applications to tune and optimize quantum computers. Previously, he was the CTO and co-founder of startups in online education and brain-computer interfaces.
Outside of work, Chris enjoys exploring new technologies, hiking along Australia's coasts and bushland, and playing video games.
Session
What happens when you combine quantum computing, neuroscience, and reinforcement learning—all in Python? This talk explores how parameterized quantum circuits can be used as “brains” for agents inspired by the nematode C. elegans, and how these agents learn to navigate their world using reinforcement learning. We’ll see how quantum and classical approaches compare, and what this means for the future of AI and quantum machine learning.