About me

I’m a researcher studying quantum computing and optimization theory, and an educator developing new ways to teach quantum ideas.

Past positions and education

Before coming to Virginia Tech in 2020, I held postdoctoral positions at:

• Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo (2020)

• Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (2017–2020)

• Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore (2014–2017)

• Université Paris VII Diderot (2012–2014)

I received my PhD in quantum information from the Institute for Quantum Computing in 2012 under the supervision of Ashwin Nayak and Levent Tunçel. 

Research

I am interested in quantum problems that can be studied using semidefinite programming, particularly those arising in quantum machine learning, cryptography, and computational complexity theory. 

My research is supported by the National Science Foundation through an NSF CAREER award. 

I serve as an editor for the International Journal of Quantum Information.

Research group   arXiv papers   Google Scholar   CV

Recent news

• August 2026 — Congratulations to my postdoctoral researcher Chen Bai, co-supervised with Atul Mantri, on accepting a position as Assistant Research Fellow at Tsinghua University!

• August 2026 — Congratulations to Ankith Mohan and Alice Zheng, the second and third PhD graduates in quantum computing from our department! 

• April 2026 — I received an NSF CAREER Award to support my research on algorithms for learning noisy quantum states.

• March 2026 — A warm welcome to Jiaqi (Jimmy) Leng, the newest member of our QuantumCS@VT team!

• January 2026 — I will serve on the program committee for QCrypt 2026.

• May 2025 — Congratulations to Akshay Bansal, the first quantum PhD graduate from our department!