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Kyrillidis awarded NSF grant for Quantum Computing

Kyrillidis awarded NSF grant.

Anastasios (Tasos) Kyrillidis Rice University

Anastasios (Tasos) Kyrillidis, the Noah Harding Assistant Professor of Computer Science, has been awarded a three-year, $470,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate novel methodologies of quantum information.

“I look forward to learning about the results of Tasos’ project,” said Luay Nakhleh, the J. S. Abercrombie Professor of Computer Science and chair of the CS department. “I’m glad to see our department making its way towards having a presence in quantum computing.”

The proposal, “Efficient and Robust Characterization of Quantum Systems,” focuses on establishing collaborations with the industry and the introduction of quantum computing courses at Rice. The grant includes researchers from the University of Maryland and IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center. Kyrillidis is principal investigator.

“The project will investigate and propose novel, highly-efficient, and robust methodologies to characterize, verify, and certify the behavior of quantum systems implementations, for better acquisition and processing of quantum information,” Kyrillidis said.

It focuses on benchmarking and testing quantum states and processes, through efficient, noise-robust and provable quantum state tomography, and as a novel validation and certification tool, based on machine-learning principles.

Kyrillidis foresees development of mathematical analysis frameworks that will contribute to efficient and informative data science. The challenges addressed in the proposal arise in many contexts, including recommendation systems, phase retrieval, multi-task learning and sensor-localization applications.

“The research will combine recent advances on non-convex optimization for large-scale computing, and will affect positively on how non-convex algorithms could be used in modern data science applications,” he said.

Cintia Listenbee, Communications and Marketing Specialist in Computer Science