At the Australian Chess Championships on 11 January 2020 at St George Leagues Club, Professor Michelle Simmons OA (Australian of the Year 2018) gave an opening address on the UNSW’s groundbreaking work on quantum computing.

It has recently been announced that a team led by her has succeeded in bringing the world’s first integrated circuit at the atomic scale to commercial reality, a breakthrough on the journey to a commercial silicon computer.

“This has never been done before and nobody else in the world can do it,” Prof Simmons said. “It is a hugely exciting result and what is even more exciting for us is having done that, we have seen that classical roadmap and that we know the commercial devices that are within the next five or six years.”