About me

Xiaodi Wu ( in simplified Chinese )

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Institute for Advanced Computer Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. I am also a Fellow at the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS).

I received my Phd in theoretical computer science in 2013 (advisor: Yaoyun Shi) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I received my B.S. degree in mathematics and physics in 2008 from the Academic Talent Program, Tsinghua University.

Before coming to Maryland, I was an Assistant Professor in the Computer and Information Science Department at the University of Oregon from 2015 to 2017. Before that, I was a Postdoctoral Associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2013 to 2015 (advisor: Aram Harrow, Scott Aaronson, Edward Farhi and Peter Shor). I was also a Simons Research Fellow at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at Berkeley, for the program of Quantum Hamiltonian Complexity in Spring 2014 (advisor: Umesh Vazirani). I also spent two summers at the Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo as a student intern (advisor: John Watrous).

Research Interests

My research aims to identify and contribute to the research where the ideas from computer science in general, i.e., computational thinking, can help facilitate the implementation of end-to-end quantum applications. To that end, my research investigates a broad range of perspectives of quantum computing, including its theoretical foundation and applications, applications and system engineering of near-term quantum devices, the software foundation (programming languages and system) of quantum computing, and the computer-aided design for quantum devices.

Specifically, it aims to contribute to the development of quantum information and computation through the study in theoretical computer science, which includes:

• quantum algorithms

• quantum computational complexity

• quantum cryptography

• quantum entanglement and sum-of-squares (SoS) proofs

It also aims to contribute to the theory and practice of near-term quantum applications, which includes:

• quantum applications in optimization and machine learning

• the foundation of variational quantum methods (also known as quantum neural networks)

• quantum sensing networks for localization and synchronization

• (practical) delegation and verification of quantum computation

• architecture, control and system engineering for near-term quantum machines including analog quantum simulators

It also aims to contribute to formal methods and programming languages in quantum computing, which includes:

• quantum program analysis and verification

• design of quantum programming languages, e.g., for domain-specific quantum applications and novel semantic constructs

• mechanized and automated proof of the security of quantum cryptography

• formally verified software toolchain for quantum computing (e.g. a certified optimizing complier for quantum programs)

as well as its application in computer-aided design of quantum devices:

• hardware description languages and design automation for quantum devices

Please check my Research Overview for details of my existing and on-going projects.

Shortcuts to Github of projects from my group.

Shortcuts to Expository Materials

Group Information

• Postdocs:

  • Liyi Li (co-advised with Mike Hicks, 2020 -)

  • Xiong Fan (co-advised with Jonathan Katz, 2020 - 2021. Now a researcher at Algorand. )

  • Robert Rand (co-advised with Mike Hicks, 2018-2020. Now an assistant professor at University of Chicago.)

  • QuICS Hartree Postdoctoral Fellows (who I have closely worked with): Penghui Yao (now Associate Professor at Nanjing University), Xin Wang (now Staff Researcher at Baidu), Cedric Lin (now at Amazon Quantum).

• Students:

  • Shouvanik Chakrabarti, Xuchen You, Jessica Thompson, Yuxiang Peng, Jiaqi Leng, Jacob Young, Ethan Hickman, Haowei Deng

News

• 05/2021, Congratulations to Shouvanik Chakrabarti on the J.P. Morgan Chase FLARE Fellowship.

• 05/2021, our research paper Exponentially Many Local Minima in Quantum Neural Networks will appear at the 38th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2021).

• 02/2021, Congratulations to Jiaqi Leng for presenting his first QIP talk Quantum Algorithms for Escaping from Saddle Points.

• 01/2021, Congratulations to Yuxiang Peng for winning the 2nd place in Student Research Competition (SRC) at POPL 2021.

• 01/2021, our research paper A Verified Optimizer for Quantum Circuits received a distinguished paper award at POPL 2021.

• 01/2021, I delivered a tutorial on the intersection of quantum computing and programming languages at POPL 2021. My slides are available here video.

• 01/2021, I am teaching CMSC/PHYS 457 in Spring 2021. I also maintain a Mini-Library on the self-learning materials and references for studying quantum information.

• 12/2020, our research paper Sublinear Classical and Quantum Algorithms for General Matrix Games will appear at the 35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2021).

• 11/2020, I am honored to be supported by the AFOSR Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) for developing Automated Security Analysis of Cryptographic Systems Under Quantum Attacks with formal methods.

• 10/2020, our research paper A Verified Optimizer for Quantum Circuits will appear at the 48th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL 2021).

• 10/2020, our research paper Simulating Large Quantum Circuits on A Small Quantum Computer appears at Physical Review Letters.

• 06/2020, I am guest editing a special issue on the Techniques of Programming Languages, Logic, and Formal Methods in Quantum Computing (call-for-papers) for ACM Transactions on Quantum Computing. Please contribute!! The deadline is August 15th, 2020.

• 02/2020, our research paper On the Principles of Differentiable Quantum Programming Languages will appear at the 41st ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI 2020).

• 02/2020, I am honored to be supported by the NSF CAREER award (CCF-1942837) for investigation on the foundation of end-to-end quantum applications.

• 12/2019, check out the course projects and new lecture notes from CMSC 657 in Fall 2019.

• 11/2019, our research paper Quantum algorithm for estimating volumes of convex bodies will appear at QIP 2020 as a single-track talk.

• 09/2019, our research paper Quantum Wasserstein Generative Adversarial Networks will appear at the 33rd Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2019).

• 09/2019, I am helping manage the NSF Student Travel Grant (CCF-1946395) for QIP 2020. Please submit your application according to the instruction by AoE November 4th, 2019.

• 07/2019, I am co-organizing the First International Workshop on Programming Languages and Quantum Computing (PLanQC 2020) at POPL 2020 with Michael Hicks and Robert Rand. The deadline for submission is AOE October 28, 2019.

• 06/2019, our research paper Verified Optimization in a Quantum Intermediate Representation (extended abstract) will appear at Quantum Physics and Logic (QPL 2019).

• 04/2019, our research paper Sublinear quantum algorithms for training linear and kernel-based classifiers will appear at the 36th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2019).

• 04/2019, our research paper Quantum SDP Solvers: Large Speed-ups, Optimality, and Applications to Quantum Learning will appear at ICALP 2019.

• 11/2018, our research papers Quantum SDP Solvers: Large Speed-ups, Optimality, and Applications to Quantum Learning and Quantum algorithms and lower bounds for convex optimization will appear at QIP 2019.

• 10/2018, I am helping manage the NSF Student Travel Grant (CCF-1840547) for QIP 2019. Please submit your application according to the instruction by AoE November 12th, 2018.

• 10/2018, our research paper Quantitative Robustness Analysis of Quantum Programs will appear at the 46th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL 2019).

• 09/2018, I am organizing a reading group on quantum programming languages in Fall 2018.

• 09/2018, I am organizing a workshop on the intersection of machine learning and quantum information (Videos and Slides NOW AVAILABLE) at QuICS on September 24 - 28, 2018.

• 01/2017, our research papers General randomness amplification with non-signaling security and Limitations of semidefinite programs for separable states and entangled games appeared at QIP 2017.

• 01/2017, our research paper Invariants of Quantum Programs: Characterizations and Generation appeared at the 44th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL 2017).

Research supported by

National Science Foundation (NSF)

Department of Energy (DOE)

Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)

Army Research Office (ARO)

I am part of the following collaborations:

• DOE ASCR Quantum Algorithm Team: Quantum Optimization and Learning and Simulation (QOALAS).

• DOE ASCR Quantum Testbed Pathfinder at UMD.

• DOE ASCR Tough Errors Are no Match (TEAM): Optimizing the quantum compiler for noise resilience.

• DOE ASCR Fundamental Algorithmic Research for Quantum Computing (FAR-QC).

• AFOSR MURI: Semantics, Formal Reasoning, and Tools For Quantum Programming.

• NSF Collaborative Research: FET: Medium: Quantum Localization and Synchronization Networks (with MIT LIDS).

• DOE QIS Centers: Quantum Science Center (QSC).

• AFOSR MURI: Towards Robust Scalable Quantum Random Access Memories.

Contact

Office: IRB 5210

Address:
Computer Science
5109 Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering
8125 Paint Branch Drive
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742

Email: xwu (at) cs.umd.edu