Members

Akitada Sakurai
I have been a postdoctoral scholar in the Quantum Information Science and Technology unit at OIST since Aprile 2022. My main research topic in this unit is quantum computing on NISQ processors. I did my Ph.D. at the National Institute of Informatics (NII) under the supervision of Prof. Kae Nemoto and got a degree from SOKENDAI in March 2022. My background is in the Non-equilibrium of many body systems (Floquet and open systems) and their application. I also have experience in atomic and molecular physics, High energy physics, first-principles calculations (Configuration Interaction and Coupled Cluster), and fluid dynamics and experiments. I am looking forward to meeting new people.

Henry Nourse
I am a theoretical quantum physicist working on quantum computing and simulation for NISQ processors. My background is in strongly correlated electrons and frustrated quantum magnets, where I design and implement large scale many-body algorithms (auxiliary particles, DMFT, tensor networks) to include strong interactions in toy models and first-principles (DFT) calculations of unconventional quantum materials. I now work on much smaller systems (a handful of qubits is much less than the thermodynamic limit), investigating things such as adiabatic quantum computing, machine learning, and the always controversial quantum (signatures of) chaos.

Josephine Dias
I am a postdoctoral scholar with the Quantum Information Science and Technology Unit at OIST. Prior to this, I worked as a postdoctoral scholar at the National Institute for Informatics in Tokyo. In January 2020, I obtained my PhD from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. My PhD thesis focused on quantum repeaters for continuous variable quantum communication. Here at the QIST unit, my research focuses on quantum networks and hybrid quantum systems.

Thomas Scruby
I am a quantum information theorist specialising in the study of quantum error correcting codes. My PhD began at University College London and was mostly completed in my bedroom during COVID, under the remote supervision of Prof. Dan Browne. Now free from lockdowns and the tyranny of British weather I am struggling with a broad range of error-correction related problems, including the design of more efficient decoding algorithms, methods for fault-tolerant logic and connections to anyon models and topological phases. Outside of this, my time is mostly spent sitting in traffic on the way to bouldering gyms, underperforming in bouldering gyms and sitting in traffic on the way back from bouldering gyms.

Nicolo Lo Piparo
I am staff scientist in the quantum information science and technology unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), Okinawa, Japan. Prior to this, I worked at the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo and at the University of Leeds, UK. My current research interests lie in quantum network, long distance quantum communication systems and quantum error correction. Besides my research I enjoy playing chess and cooking.

Aoi Hayashi
I am a Ph.D. student at SOKENDAI and studying at OIST. Before starting my Ph.D., I graduated from the Tokyo Institute of Technology with B.Sc. in physics. The research topic was theoretical condensed matter physics, especially quantum phase transitions of bosons in optical lattices. My current research project is about quantum machine learning, and my interest in this topic is what and how properties of quantum systems are suitable for quantum information processing in machine learning schemes. When free, I listen to classical music, for example, chamber music, and play the violin! My favorite composers are E. Elgar, L.V. Beethoven, and F. Schubert.

Peizhe Li
I got the master's degree at University of Mainz, where I worked on the design and evaluation of a memoryless quantum repeater schemes based on continuous variable codes and cavity-QED for long-distance quantum communication. After completing my MSc degree, I started my PhD in NII (National Institute of Informatics) and then came to OIST as a special research student. Currently, I’m interested in exploring the potential applications of the cavity-QED light-matter interaction and improving the performance of repeater schemes using bosonic codes and the trapped atoms/ions.

Shin Nishio
I am a PhD student at SOKENDAI and a special research student at OIST. I took a bachelor's degree at Keio University in the design of a compiler for quantum computers. I was at the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo for the first couple of years of my PhD course. I worked to reduce the cost of using quantum error correction codes in optical systems. My current research interests are:

• large-scale quantum information processing systems such as fault-tolerant quantum computation
• Implementation and semantics for quantum programming languages
• Multi-core quantum computation with quantum interconnects

Outside of work, I enjoy taking astrophotography and playing Okinawan flute.

 

Sougato Chowdhury
I joined the OIST PhD program in September 2022 and am currently finishing my third rotation in the Quantum Information Science and Technology Unit. I plan to join the unit as a full-time PhD student starting from September 2023. I am originally from Kolkata, India and obtained my BS-MS degree from IISER Pune in May 2022. My Master's thesis was on interpreting the AdS/CFT correspondence in terms of error-correcting codes. Prior to coming to OIST, I had mostly been interested in quantum gravity but have since shifted towards more practical problems involving quantum information and hence the unit's research is well aligned with the kind of topics I want to work on for my PhD thesis. In my free time, I like to play chess, DnD, and interactive fiction, and also practice juggling occasionally.

Jiajun Chen
I am Jiajun Chen, a first-year Ph.D. student at OIST, presently in my second rotation with the Quantum Information Science and Technology Unit. I hold an MEng in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Bristol and have prior experience in electromagnetic wave design for NV centers and in optimizing tomography estimation for evolving quantum channels. My current focus is on quantum error correction coding, which merges well with my prior interest in classical error correction. I am eager to delve deeper into the realm of quantum communication and networks throughout my Ph.D. Outside of academia, I enjoy Arduino and LEGO projects as well as survival games.

Salome Catherine Hayes-Shuptar
I am a first year PhD student at OIST, working on my first rotation in the Quantum Information Science and Technology Unit. I completed my BSc in Theoretical Physics at University College Dublin in Ireland in May 2023, where my thesis was on Multipartite Nonlocality in Interacting Spin Chains. Through previous projects I've also explored quantum batteries and quantum error mitigation. I hope to further explore my interests in quantum computing and technology before settling on a PhD topic. Outside of physics, I enjoy playing the piano, drawing and writing.