QCIS-FF: Quantum Computing & Information Science Faculty Fellow at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign

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Quantum Computing and Information Science (QCIS) is a priority area for growth at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for the computer science department (Illinois CS), the Grainger College of Engineering, and the University. While other departments in engineering, including Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Physics, have faculty in this area, the CS department currently does not have any faculty actively pursuing quantum computing as their primary research area. This NSF QCIS Faculty Fellow award will enable Illinois CS to recruit a faculty member who will focus on QCIS research and who can lead the development and teaching of a quantum-focused curriculum for computer science students. In addition to having strong support in the Computer Science Department, the QCIS Faculty Fellow will benefit from major investments in QCIS by the Grainger College of Engineering and the State of Illinois. The Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology center (IQUIST) in the Grainger College of Engineering is a multi-disciplinary enterprise that brings together researchers from Physics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and other departments, to collaborate on a variety of quantum information related problems. One of the key thrusts of IQUIST is to build a distributed quantum processor network testbed which will provide a unique opportunity for faculty in computer science to leverage. The Discovery Partners Institute (DPI), recently established by the University of Illinois and the State of Illinois in the city of Chicago, will provide opportunities for future Illinois faculty members in QCIS to interact closely with students and researchers at the University of Chicago, Fermilab, Northwestern University, Argonne National Laboratory, and the University of Illinois at Chicago though the Chicago Quantum Exchange.Theoretical computer science has provided a significant impetus for quantum computing research soon after the inception of the field and plays a central role in its development. Computational complexity, cryptography and algorithms are fertile and natural areas of research collaboration for a QCIS Faculty Fellow and the theory faculty in the CS department have strong presence in all these areas and some have touched upon quantum topics in their research. Illinois has long been a preeminent leader in the fields of scientific computing and high-performance computing (HPC). Within the scientific computing group at Illinois, departmental faculty are pursuing work that is cohesive to research in quantum computation and quantum information. There is, in particular, interesting work to be done in signal processing with quantum algorithms. There have been some very interesting applications of quantum algorithms to tasks such as signal denoising, and finding concrete applications in various ML tasks is of much interest. Practical quantum computing requires not only algorithmic development but substantial innovations in programming, systems and architecture and here also Illinois CS has a large set of faculty working on a diverse set of topics that will be excellent collaborators for a QCIS Faculty Fellow.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.