Xiaodi Wu

xwu's picture
Associate Professor
xwu@cs.umd.edu
3247 Atlantic Building
Website

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Institute for Advanced Computer Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Fellow at the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS).  I am also an Amazon Visiting Academic working for AWS Braket. I am a recipient of the Sloan Research Fellowship, NSF CAREER, and AFOSR YIP awards.

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).  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. I also spent two summers at the Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo as a student intern (advisor: John Watrous). I received my Ph.D. 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.

My research aims to bridge the gap between the theoretical foundation of quantum computing and the limitation of realistic quantum machines. More specifically, I am working on the foundations of practical quantum applications on realistic quantum machines by investigating computational models that capture the native programmability of quantum devices.  I am also building efficient and reliable systems to operate both near-term and long-term quantum devices. Please check my research overview for details of my existing and ongoing projects.

Courses

Advanced Topics in Theory of Computing; The Foundation of End-to-End Quantum Applications (CMSC858O, Spring 2024)
Introduction to Quantum Computing (CMSC457/PHYS457, Fall 2023)
Introduction to Quantum Computing (CMSC457/PHYS457, Spring 2023)
The Foundation of End-to-End Quantum Applications (CMSC858O, Fall 2022)
Introduction to Quantum Computing (CMSC457/PHYS457, Spring 2022)

Publications

2024

S. Kushnir, Leng, J., Peng, Y., Fan, L., and Wu, X., “QHDOPT: A Software for Nonlinear Optimization with Quantum Hamiltonian Descent”, 2024.
L. Li, Chang, L., Cleaveland, R., Zhu, M., and Wu, X., “The Quantum Abstract Machine”, 2024.
L. Li, Zhu, M., Cleaveland, R., Nicolellis, A., Lee, Y., Chang, L., and Wu, X., “Qafny: A Quantum-Program Verifier”, 2024.
J. Leng, Li, J., Peng, Y., and Wu, X., “Expanding Hardware-Efficiently Manipulable Hilbert Space via Hamiltonian Embedding”, 2024.

2023

L. Li, Zhu, M., Cleaveland, R., Lee, Y., Chang, L., and Wu, X., “Qafny: Quantum Program Verification Through Type-guided Classical Separation Logic”, 2023.
S. Chakrabarti, Childs, A. M., Hung, S. - H., Li, T., Wang, C., and Wu, X., “Quantum algorithm for estimating volumes of convex bodies”, ACM Transactions on Quantum Computing, vol. 4, 2023.
Y. Peng, Young, J., Liu, P., and Wu, X., “SimuQ: A Domain-Specific Language For Quantum Simulation With Analog Compilation”, 2023.
X. You, Chakrabarti, S., Chen, B., and Wu, X., “Analyzing Convergence in Quantum Neural Networks: Deviations from Neural Tangent Kernels”, 2023.
J. Leng, Hickman, E., Li, J., and Wu, X., “Quantum Hamiltonian Descent”, 2023.
B. Augustino, Leng, J., Nannicini, G., Terlaky, T., and Wu, X., “A quantum central path algorithm for linear optimization”, 2023.
J. Leng, Zheng, Y., and Wu, X., “A quantum-classical performance separation in nonconvex optimization”, 2023.

2022

X. You, Chakrabarti, S., and Wu, X., “A Convergence Theory for Over-parameterized Variational Quantum Eigensolvers”, 2022.

2021

M. Barbosa, Barthe, G., Fan, X., Grégoire, B., Hung, S. - H., Katz, J., Strub, P. - Y., Wu, X., and Zhou, L., “EasyPQC: Verifying Post-Quantum Cryptography”, ACM CCS 2021, 2021.
L. Li, Voichick, F., Hietala, K., Peng, Y., Wu, X., and Hicks, M., “Verified Compilation of Quantum Oracles”, 2021.
K. Hietala, Rand, R., Hung, S. - H., Wu, X., and Hicks, M., “A Verified Optimizer for Quantum Circuits”, Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, vol. 5, no. POPL, 2021.
X. You and Wu, X., “Exponentially Many Local Minima in Quantum Neural Networks”, Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Machine Learning, PMLR, vol. 139, pp. 12144-12155, 2021.
Y. Peng, Ying, M., and Wu, X., “Algebraic Reasoning of Quantum Programs via Non-Idempotent Kleene Algebra”, 2021.
K. Hietala, Li, L., Gaur, A., Green, A., Rand, R., Wu, X., and Hicks, M., “Expanding the VOQC Toolkit”, in The Second International Workshop on Programming Languages for Quantum Computing (PLanQC 2021), 2021.

2020

S. Zhu, Hung, S. - H., Chakrabarti, S., and Wu, X., “On the Principles of Differentiable Quantum Programming Languages”, 2020.
T. Peng, Harrow, A., Ozols, M., and Wu, X., “Simulating large quantum circuits on a small quantum computer”, Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 125, no. 150504, 2020.