Speaker:

Ainesh Bakshi

Talk title:

Understanding Quantum Systems via the Algorithmic Lens 

Date and Location:

Tuesday, April 1, 2025

Virtual

This lecture is open to the Department of Computer Science community. Attendance information will be shared via email.

Abstract:

Quantum mechanics is one of our most profound and successful theoretical frameworks for understanding the physical world. It continues to drive remarkable technological and theoretical breakthroughs, spanning computing, coding theory, cryptography, material science, and chemistry. In this talk, I will describe how the algorithmic lens has been pivotal in rigorously analyzing such quantum systems and revealed deeper structural properties that were previously inaccessible through traditional approaches. I will also describe algorithmic progress on related computational tasks and discuss the implications for Quantum Advantage. 

About Ainesh Bakshi:

Ainesh Bakshi is a Postdoctoral Fellow jointly appointed in the Mathematics and Computer Science departments at MIT. Prior to that, he obtained his PhD in Computer Science at CMU. He is broadly interested in theoretical computer science and quantum information. His main research thread revolves around using the algorithmic toolkit, consisting of iterative methods and convex hierarchies, to understand large quantum systems. These results have gained significant attention recently, including two Quanta articles, two QIP Invited Plenaries, a QIP Best Student Paper. He is also interested in extending this algorithmic toolkit and applying it to problems arising in high-dimensional statistics, privacy, metric embeddings, and numerical linear algebra.