Renowned Professor John C. S. Lui Unveils the Foundations and Future of the Quantum Internet
15 Oct 2025
Professor John C. S. Lui shares forward-looking insights into quantum networking and online learning algorithms for building decentralised quantum communication systems.
The lecture sparks engaging discussion on quantum link optimisation, entanglement fidelity, and network design with Professor Lui.
Professor Martin Wong, Provost and Chair Professor in the Department of Computer Science (right), presents the souvenir to Professor Lui in appreciation of his inspiring lecture.
Professor John C. S. Lui, a leading expert in quantum Internet, online learning theory, and systems optimisation from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, delivered an enlightening lecture titled “Quantum Internet: The Final Frontier” on 10 October 2025, presenting a clear roadmap from fundamental principles to scalable network design. He examined the emerging Quantum Internet’s role in enabling high-fidelity communication and processing, spotlighting learning-based path selection and the proposed Quantum Border Gateway Protocol (QBGP) as key enablers of robust, decentralised quantum networking.
Professor Lui began his lecture by outlining the evolution of computing research from the era of AI and big data to the next wave: quantum communication and networking. He introduced qubits, superposition, and entanglement, and explained how quantum repeaters and entanglement swapping underpin quantum routing. To address decision-making under uncertainty, he connected classical learning theory to quantum networking via the multi-armed bandit framework, leading to LinkSelFiE, an efficient online algorithm for quantum link selection and fidelity estimation that reduces quantum resource usage while maintaining high accuracy. This marked a key advance toward scalable quantum network deployment.
Moving from links to networks, Professor Lui presented QBGP Protocol, a decentralised interdomain routing protocol inspired by the classical Internet’s Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). QBGP coordinates across independently managed quantum networks and, together with an online top K path selection algorithm, adapts to identify high-fidelity entanglement paths. Simulation results demonstrated improved throughput, fidelity, and goodput, highlighting QBGP’s scalability and efficiency. Professor Lui concluded by emphasising open research directions in distributed quantum learning, optimisation, and protocol design, advocating for interdisciplinary collaboration to pioneer the foundations of the future quantum internet.
John C. S. Lui is the Choh-Ming Li Chair Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. A globally acclaimed scholar, he is a Fellow of ACM, Fellow of IEEE, Senior Research Fellow of the Croucher Foundation, and Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering (HKAE). He has served as a visiting professor at renowned institutions including UCLA, Columbia University, Caltech, INRIA, among others. Professor Lui’s scholarly impact is demonstrated by multiple best paper awards at IEEE/ACM conferences, influential editorial roles with leading publications, and teaching excellence honours from CUHK.
