Q&A: Texas Tech CIO Joins Statewide Quantum Committee

EDTECH: What role should CIOs play in helping their institutions plan for the future?

ZHOU: As technologists, it’s our job to learn the cutting edge. The cutting edge isn’t always beneficial, but we have the responsibility to identify emerging technologies we can bring to our institutions to drive the best outcomes. That’s where CIO 3.0 plays a big role — that may be AI, quantum or other things, but that’s where CIOs can be a transformative force.

EDTECH: How have you approached user satisfaction at Texas Tech?

ZHOU: One of the things that defines the existence of technology is the customer who can benefit from what we bring in. Being customer-centric is critical and makes our work more meaningful every day. I’m fortunate to have a good team that’s focused on customer satisfaction. What I bring to Texas Tech is to accelerate and expand that culture and create new initiatives to put customer-centricity on steroids. It’s not a one-off activity, but an intentional system including policy, processes and KPIs like the net promoter score to methodically drive improvements. I joined Texas Tech in September 2024, and over the next year, we more than doubled our faculty satisfaction score. 

EDTECH: As someone who’s been focused on quantum computing for some time, why is now the time to advance this field?

ZHOU: When I started with IBM, we were at a 130-nanometer semiconductor processing node, and today, the semiconductor manufacturing technology has moved to about 2 nanometers. It’s amazingly small, and it raises the question, what is the next technology that can allow us to continue driving the evolution? Quantum potentially is what would continue to drive that upscaling of processing power.

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The other angle is application. We are trying to solve a lot of problems today, such as drug development for cancer and diabetes. Computing modeling can speed up drug discovery. However, taking the modeling of penicillin as an example, it is an intractable problem for classical computers. With quantum computing, it becomes possible. The hope is that quantum will open the door for many new applications in health, financial management, scientific discoveries and more. I think that’s going to be critically important for the future of the human race.

Third, the power consumption for quantum computing is very low, so that gives us a different path to expand computational power without creating a huge dependency on electricity. 

EDTECH: What led you to create Texas Tech’s first quantum computing course?

ZHOU: Quantum computing developers need three areas of knowledge to be productive: quantum physics, linear algebra and programming. At Texas Tech, we’ve been teaching our students each of these for years, but we didn’t have a course that put all three together in a cohesive way. That’s the opportunity I identified when I came to Texas Tech, and that’s the course I created. At the end of the class, students do a capstone project, and the results were fantastic. For example, our students developed quantum AI models to detect breast cancer with over 90% accuracy.

EDTECH: What role can higher education play in helping states develop their quantum industries?

ZHOU: Quantum technology is still new, and a lot of areas are under research, so that’s one role: conducting research on the front of the wave to create new ideas and innovations. Second, becoming a pilot partner, because we have very diverse user bases. And third is scaling the outcomes by teaching and training the next generation of the workforce. 

EDTECH: What should university CIOs be thinking about quantum computing, if it hasn’t been on their radar?

ZHOU: If they aren’t thinking about it, there may be many reasons, including that they have different priorities in their environment. I would say speak to your leadership and make sure you’re aligning with the institution’s strategic priorities. Quantum may become part of that. If quantum hasn’t been considered, CIOs can raise awareness and ask, would this technology be beneficial to us, and what’s our plan? I suggest talking to peers to understand how this could become a transformative force for the everyday work we are doing. In our technology world, standing still is falling behind. 

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EDTECH: What else should our readers know about quantum computing?

ZHOU: With any new technology, managing risk and broadening access are important. The question for us as technology leaders is, how can we democratize access to quantum? This shouldn’t just be for Texas Tech, but also for community colleges, high schools, institutions in remote areas. The access should not be defined by ZIP codes. That’s also part of my new role as one of the state-appointed committee members: How can we support quantum access so that we bring up the entire society?