In this first part of a two-part conversation, Jerry Cuomo sits down with Dr. Lara Jehi of Cleveland Clinic, where one of the world’s first quantum computers dedicated to healthcare and life sciences sits right on campus.

This conversation is part of the Wild Ducks Thinking Quantum series, as Jerry continues exploring the ideas behind his upcoming book, Think Quantum.

Lara is a practicing neurologist and epilepsy specialist who has watched medicine become increasingly computational. She explains how that evolution led her from treating patients to working at the intersection of medical research, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing.

The discussion gets practical quickly. Lara describes why medical research can present a particularly difficult problem for AI: researchers may have thousands of biological features to analyze but relatively few patients to learn from. In one of her projects, that means roughly 20,000 genetic features and a cohort of only 150 patients. She explains why traditional AI can struggle with that imbalance and where quantum computing might help.

Jerry and Lara also explore why quantum shouldn’t be viewed as a replacement for AI or classical computing. Instead, Lara describes a hybrid approach where researchers choose the right computational tool for each part of the problem and combine them into a larger workflow.

Along the way, they talk about where medical research data comes from and what it takes to bring physicians, computer scientists, chemists, and engineers together. Lara argues that successful multidisciplinary teams share a few important traits: curiosity, tenacity, a willingness to take risks, and the ability to learn from failure.

You may also hear a hint that Lara makes an appearance in Jerry’s upcoming book, Think Quantum. Like Think Blockchain and Think AI, the book takes a student-friendly, builder-first approach to understanding complex technology through hands-on examples and experiments.

If you’d like early access to draft chapters, updates, and behind-the-scenes material as the book evolves, visit wildducks.us and join the free early access list.

Key learning moments

1. Hybrid computing: Quantum, AI, and classical computing can work together, each handling the parts of a problem that best fit its strengths.
2. The medical data challenge: Thousands of biological features combined with small patient populations can push traditional AI toward overfitting.
3. Building multidisciplinary teams: Curiosity, tenacity, risk-taking, and learning from failure can provide common ground across very different scientific disciplines.