I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Rice University. Before that, I was an Assistant Professor in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University Bloomington from 2021 to 2022, a Hartree Postdoctoral Fellow in the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS) at the University of Maryland from 2020 to 2021, supervised by Dr. Andrew Childs, and a Postdoctoral Fellow at UT Austin from 2018 to 2020, working under the supervision of Dr. Scott Aaronson. I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering at Penn State University, where I was fortunate to have Dr. Sean Hallgren as my advisor. I received my Bachelor's degree from National Taiwan University.
My research interests include quantum algorithms, quantum complexity, and quantum cryptography. I am devoted to understanding quantum computing's capabilities, limits, and how it could change computer science. Most of my research is focusing on dealing with the following two questions: First, which computational tasks can have quantum advantages, and what are the limits and minimum quantum resources for quantum advantages on these problems? Second, how does quantum computing change the landscape of computer science?
Outside academics, I love playing various sports, including baseball, soccer, badminton, basketball, swimming, etc. Well, I am certainly not good at all of them. I joined the soccer team and softball team in college and had wonderful memories with my teammates. Besides, I enjoy cooking, reading history, and listening to music or radio.
I’m seeking highly motivated PhD students for Fall 2026 in quantum computing theory, with particular interest in quantum complexity theory and quantum cryptography.
[11/2025] Our work Adversarially robust quantum state learning has been accepted as a contributed talk at QIP2026
[11/2025] Our work A Catalyst Framework for the Quantum Linear System Problem via the Proximal Point Algorithm has been accepted to AAAI2026
[7/2025] Our work Adversarially robust quantum state learning has been accepted to FOCS2025
[6/2025] Our work Quantum State Learning Implies Circuit Lower Bounds has been accepted to COLT2025
[4/2025] I am serving on the PC of ISAAC2025. Look forward to seeing your amazing works in theory of computer science!
[5/2024] Our work Quantum State Learning Implies Circuit Lower Bounds has been accepted to TQC2024
[5/2024] I am serving on the PC of Asiacrypt 2024. Look forward to seeing your amazing works!
[2/2024] Our work, Efficient learning of t-doped stabilizer states with single-copy measurements, has been published on Quantum
[2/2024] I just received the NSF CAREER Award! Thank you, NSF!
[1/2024] I am on the TQC 2024 committee. Look forward to seeing your amazing works.
[9/2023] Dr Kaden Hazzard, Dr Kevin Slagle, and I have won the DOE Quantum Testbed Pathfinder Award! [news]
[5/2023] Our work On the Impossibility of General Parallel Fast-forwarding of Hamiltonian Simulation has been accepted by CCC'23
[4/2023] I just received Google Research Scholar! Thank you, Google!
[7/2022] I am excited to receive my first NSF award with Dr Fang Song for investigating quantum computing and meta complexity.
[7/2022] I joined the Department of Computer Science at Rice University as an Assistant Professor this July!
[7/2022] Our work Classical Verification of Quantum Depth has been accepted to TQC 2022 and QCrypt 2022
[5/2022] Our work Post-Quantum Simulatable Extraction with Minimal Assumptions: Black-Box and Constant-Round has been accepted to Crypto 2022
NSF CAREER Award 2024
NSF Award: Collaborative Research: FET: Small: Minimum Quantum Circuit Size Problems, Variants, and Applications 2022
Postdocs:
Yuhan Liu (2025 - present)
Joint with Maryam and Vova
Chuhan Lu (2025 - present)
Jianqiang Li (2025 - present)
Joint with Tirthak and Tasos
Daniel Liang (2023 - 2025)
Joint with Fang Song
Xiao Liang (2021 - 2023): Now an Assistant Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kon
Students:
Yu-Ching Shen (2024 - present)
Chia-Ying Lin (2024 - present)
Email: nc67 at rice dot edu
I am from Kaohsiung, Taiwan