Currently working as a Senior Staff Scientist at QC Ware, managing the team in charge of research and customer projects for chemistry applications in quantum computing.

I contributed C++ code to the open-source software Psi4 from 2014 to 2016, and to the commercial Q-Chem software from 2016. I enjoy coding a lot and started actively practicing and competing on HackerRank, supported by a thorough reading of "Introduction to Algorithms". My HackerRank activities are on hold while getting settled in Boston.

Short bio

I obtained my Master in Chemistry from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in 2009 after conducting my Master thesis project with Prof. Walter Thiel at the Max Plack Institute for Coal Research in Mulheim an der Ruhr (Germany). In 2013 I received my PhD in computational and theoretical chemistry under the direction of Prof. Clemence Corminboeuf in EPFL.

In 2014, I was awarded an Early Post-Doc mobility grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) to work on Symmetry-Adapted Perturbation Theory with Prof. C. David Sherrill in GeorgiaTech (Atlanta, USA). In 2016 I received an Advanced Post-Doc mobility grant from the SNSF to work with Prof. Martin Head-Gordon at UC Berkeley (USA). After the end of my grant, Prof. Head-Gordon hired me as a post-doc researcher. Between 2019 and 2023, I worked at Zapata Computing on applications of quantum computing for chemistry, essentially for the NISQ era. Since 2023, I work as a senior staff scientist at QC Ware and have extended my work into the fault-tolerant quantum computing realm. I manage the team at QC Ware working on applications of quantum computing in chemistry, mostly in customer projects.

In 2012, I co-authored an introductory textbook for general chemistry.

Current interests

Quantum computing

• Quantum Phase Estimation

• Quantum Krylov algorithms

• Measurement methods

• Variational Quantum Eigensolver

Quantum Chemistry

• Inter- and intramolecular non-covalent interactions, in particular dispersion interactions

• Energy decomposition analysis: both variational (ALMO-EDA) and Symmetry-Adapted Perturbation Theory (SAPT)

• Catalysis

• Quantum computing

• Embedding theories

Software engineering

• Machine learning 

• Algorithmic and problem solving