Jake Tibbetts, a graduate student at UC Berkeley, is the recipient of the prestigious Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ 2020 Leonard M. Rieser Award. Tibbetts received this award for his article “Keeping classified information secret in a world of quantum computing,” published in the Bulletin on February 11, 2020. The article was selected from the Bulletin’s “Voices of Tomorrow” column, which features the writing of rising experts in topics including nuclear risk and disruptive technologies.
Tibbetts is currently pursuing a Master’s degree at UC Berkeley, where he is studying electrical engineering and computer science. He is a fellow at the NNSA-supported Nuclear Science and Security Consortium, and has previously worked as a research assistant at the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. During his time at UC Berkeley, Tibbetts has made contributions to the Nuclear Policy Working Group and the Project on Nuclear Gaming. In the latter, he was involved in the creation of “SIGNAL,” an online three-player experimental wargame in which three countries, some armed with nuclear weapons, attempt to achieve national goals through diplomatic and military means. Tibbetts received undergraduate degrees from UC Berkeley in EECS and Global Studies in May 2020.
From the Bulletin: “In his piece, Jake Tibbetts accomplished the kind of deep, thoughtful, and well-crafted journalism that is the Bulletin’s hallmark,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists editor in chief John Mecklin said. “Quantum computing is a complex field; many articles about it are full of strange exaggerations and tangled prose. Tibbetts’ piece, on the other hand, is an exemplar of clarity and precision and genuinely worthy of the Rieser Award.”
The Rieser Award is the capstone of the Bulletin’s Next Generation Program, created to ensure that new voices, steeped in science and public policy, have a trusted platform from which to address existential challenges. It is named for physicist Leonard M. Rieser (1922-1998), board chair at the Bulletin from 1984 until his death in 1998.”
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