“I don’t know any teacher fixed trans in quantum computing, what it means that I am my own mother. I don’t have a model to follow. Or I keep to myself or anything,” says Jamie Bermejo Vega, a researcher, a 32-year-old University of Granada. It is one of the few scientific transgender in the world with its level in quantum computing and the only one in Europe. “There are a lot of people who are surprised to meet me just for being trans. Imagine when they find out that working in quantum computing. Not processed,” he says.
“it costs more to enter a site if there is nobody who looks like you.”
Your path is clearly unusual. In fact, Bermejo Vega dedicates part of his day that their profile is becoming more common. The role of a mentor or model is key in their world.
The value of access to a place where no one else is like you requires an effort that is unknown to those who do not belong to minorities. “It costs more to enter a site if there is nobody who looks like you,” he says. “You don’t have a natural ally that will go to help. If you’re a girl Spanish scientific and come to a conference table and they are all white men older germans, is going to give you a lot of thing to sit,” explains Bermejo-Vega. “The science is very hierarchical. If there are ten people who are like the other in the hierarchy and there is only one like you, the other is going to have more options,” he adds during a conversation with THE COUNTRY in the days of Quantum Simulation & Computation, held at the ICMAT (Institute for Mathematical Sciences) in Madrid.
Bermejo-Vega distinguishes between researchers who can admire for his scientific work and those who are also capable of inspiring his career: “A woman inspires me because he has managed to pass. If you don’t see one you like, you impose a lot,” he says.
“The science solves problems very complicated. This requires a lot of people. If sesgamos who goes into science, we are limiting the people who could solve those problems. The approaches are reduced if everyone is of the same color or country. The best thing is the variety,” he explains.
Bermejo Vega, born in Cáceres, he studied the double degree of Computer science and Physics at the University of Salamanca. There was her aunt Pastora Vega, professor of Systems Engineering and Automatic. “I have a model in the family,” says Bermejo Vega. Since the institute was of the class lists, but the Physical will cost more: “your brain doesn’t like to make equations. It is a myth. You have to work many hours,” he says.
“your brain doesn’t like to make equations. It is a myth. You have to work many hours”
In those years had not yet transitioned into a woman, but he already sensed: “people could tell it was rare. I am very queer and eccentric,” he says. In a school with male predominance, preferred to be accompanied by students of races is not scientific and more artistic. Your partner from that time is a translator.
After a stay during the race in Canada in 2008, where he decided to pursue research in quantum computing, Bermejo Vega went to Germany to graduate. His doctoral work he did in Munich in the team of the Spanish Juan Ignacio Cirac. After that stay, and the thesis, he spent three years at the Free University of Berlin.
In 2019, he decided to return to Spain, thanks to a research contract Marie Curie Athenea3i in Granada: “In Germany there is more money, but the research is very pyramidal and it is very difficult to set. And I missed Spain. There are things you cannot do, or costs more, as a policy, or to communicate about science,” he explains.
The poor situation of research in Spain it was a problem, but it was not decisive: “The Government has definanciado the research. It has dropped a lot of investment, but the people who do science here is very good. If you get a square, you can do research. Maybe you don’t have a group of 35 people as in Germany, but the system as a pyramid there is not good,” he says.
The transition was not easy
The great change in his life was deciding to come out of the closet, or to transition. It was not easy. First, because they fooled themselves. “All my life I’ve had doubts of gender. But there are things that you block. Realize that you are transgender is not easy. There is a lot of transphobia in the world and you try to give another explanation to your personal problems”, he says.
it Was a process that in his case ended a few months ago, in Berlin, with 31 years: “If I had transicionado before as I would have done worse in my career,” he admits. “It was like going to worshipping updates of a software to improve the system. Helped Me experiment with my pronouns, with changes of clothes, make-up. My friends started calling me ‘she’. You’re taking spaces. Until I came out at work and in the family,” he adds.
This personal liberation also improve your professional performance: “This was done in part to improve my research. I feel better about myself and have more energy. Before you come out of the closet and it cost me more to live. Everything costs three times more: the social interaction, to sell at a conference. See you as an uncle, but you’re not. All that sucks energy. When transicionas and the people treats you as the gender that you are, you get energy dedicabas before to resist”, he explains.
In his role as an activist in the academy, Bermejo Vega coorganiza a few days quantum, where the variety in the profiles of the speakers. The first was in Brazil and are already preparing the second edition in India. “Are the conferences, inclusive, and the atmosphere is different. People are most comfortable with. There is less stress. See visibly more happiness,” he says.
The boom quantum
quantum computing experiencing a boom. In 2019, the computing quantum has become a discipline debated in the media. In January, IBM unveiled in Las Vegas its first quantum computer commercial. In October, Google announced that it had achieved the so-called “supremacy quantum”: your quantum computer programmable apparently an operation that fell outside the capabilities of a supercomputer conventional.
To Bermejo Vega the announcement of the supremacy perhaps exaggerates the achievement, but has no doubt that “there are reasons to be happy” even if it is “more a technical demonstration that fundamental. It is more to say that the technology is maturing and has come to an interesting point,” he explains. The experiments quantum will continue and it is likely that in the next few years to advertise a computer able to clearly perform operations with practical applications unimaginable today. We’re on that path.
Bermejo Vega investigate from Granada, with a laboratory, that we are “riding”. Your scope of work is in part similar to that of the Spanish Sergio Boixo, who designed the experimemuch of Google. “Work on the fundamental principles of quantum computers, and when a quantum computer is better than a traditional one and what test can be done to check,” explains Bermejo Vega.
