Kevin Thompson

Biography

I have been at Sandia since 2019, first as a postdoc then as a staff member.  I am an applied mathematician/theoretical computer scientist and my primary focus for the past few years has been quantum optimization.  Additionally, I have expertise in many other subfields of quantum information including quantum error correction, quantum pseudorandomness, optics, and Hamiltonian computing.  I am part of the Department of Energy’s Fundamental Algorithmic Research for Quantum Computing (FAR-QC) project as well as the Sandia Quantum Algorithms and Applications Collaboratory (QuAAC).  I am excited by learning new mathematics and applying it to problems in quantum information. 

Education

• UC Berkeley 2007-2012.  B.S.E. degree in Engineering Physics with a Minor in Mathematics.  During that time I had research experience in Plasmonics, Image analysis and astrophysics.
• Harvard 2012-2018.  Masters and PhD in Applied math.  Focus was on quantum error correction and Hamiltonian computing.
• Sandia 2019-2020. Postdoc.  Wrote several papers on approximation algorithms for the local Hamiltonian problem.
• Sandia 2020-present. Senior member of Technical staff.

Publications

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Selected Publications

• https://epubs.siam.org/doi/abs/10.1137/1.9781611977554.ch48
• https://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2023/18316/
• https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.08342
• https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.15688