Quantum Topology meets Quantum Computation
April 27th - May 1st, 2026
Monte Verità, Ascona Switzerland
Monte Verità, Ascona Switzerland
The goal of this meeting is to bring together researchers working at the interface of quantum topology and quantum information, including quantum algorithms, topological quantum computation, and topological phases. We aim to foster cross-disciplinary discussions that push forward both mathematical foundations and applications to quantum information science.
The workshop will take place at Monte Verità, a remarkable location overlooking Lake Maggiore in Ascona, Switzerland. Monte Verità has a storied history: in the early 20th century, it was home to a vibrant community of artists, anarchists, philosophers, and writers, including Hermann Hesse. Later, it became a hub for cultural and scientific exchange, and today it serves as a state-of-the-art congress and cultural center run by the Monte Verità Foundation, in collaboration with ETH Zurich. Surrounded by gardens and forest, with sweeping views of the lake and mountains, the setting is designed to encourage both focused work and informal exchange.
Jørgen Ellegaard Andersen (Center for QM/SDU)
"Replacing Monte Carlo Simulation with Gaussian Boson Sampling"
Dror Bar-Natan (Toronto) [slides]
"Chern-Simons-Witten Theory Near The Co-Commutative Limit"
Marcos Crichigno (Phasecraft) [slides]
"Symmetric Functions and Quantum Many Body Physics"
Shawn Cui (Purdue)
"On relations among quantum invariants of 3-manifolds"
Marco De Renzi (Université de Montpellier) [slides]
"Non-Semisimple Topological Quantum Field Theories"
Henrik Dreyer (Quantinuum) [slides]
"Why is topology necessary for simulating superconductors with quantum computers?"
Layla Hormozi (Brookhaven National Lab)
"Toward an Analog Implementation of the Quantum Algorithm for Approximating the Jones Polynomial"
Filippo Iulianelli (University of Southern California) [slides]
"Universal quantum computation using Ising anyons from a non-semisimple topological quantum field theory"
Mikhail Khovanov (Johns Hopkins University)
"Introduction to link homology"
Robert König (TUM) [slides]
"Gate implementations in topological codes"
Seth Lloyd (MIT)
"Quantum algorithms for calculating homoloy"
Maksymilian Manko (University of Zurich) [slides]
"Reinforcement learning approaches to the Andrews-Curtis conjecture"
Konstantinos Meichanetzidis (Quantinuum) [slides]
"End-to-end quantum algorithms for the Jones polynomial"
Milo Moses (Caltech) [slides]
"Why are UMTCs the complete algebraic invariant for 2D topological order?"
Steven Simon (Oxford) [slides]
"History and Status of Anyons in Condensed Matter"
Zhenghan Wang (Microsoft/UCSB) [slides]
"Topological fault-tolerance in quantum computing"
Tutorials:
Aleksei Andreev (University of Zurich)
Christian Blanchet (Université Paris Cité)
Luke Conners (University of Zurich)
Azat Gainutdinov (CNRS / Université de Tours)
Dmitry Grinko (QuSoft / University of Amsterdam)
Jernej Grlj (University of Southern California)
Corey Jones* (North Carolina State University)
Sung Kim (University of Southern California)
Tevž Lotrič (University of Oxford)
David Penneys (The Ohio State University)
Eric Rowell* (Texas A&M University)
Shikhin Sethi (University of Southern California)
Adam Sikora (University at Buffalo)
Joshua Sussan (CUNY)
Emmanuel Wagner (Université Paris Cité)
Yasuyoshi Yonezawa (Quantinuum)
Alexander Zlokapa (MIT)
Anna Beliakova
Aaron Lauda
Alexander Schmidhuber
Supported by the Simons Foundation and ETH Zurich and USC