Postdoc Position in Quantum Software and Quantum Communication (DEIS)

Postdoc Position in Quantum Software and Quantum Communication (DEIS)

Aalborg University

Aalborg, Denmark

At the Technical Faculty of IT and Design, Department of Computer Science, a fully-funded postdoc position is available within the area of design automation / software stack for quantum computing and quantum communication. The position will be hosted at the Aalborg campus of Aalborg University.The employment is for 12 months with the possibility of extension.

Your work tasks

The candidate will join a collaborative project. Depending on the background and preferences of the candidate, this will be a project that also includes partners from Aarhus University and industry or a project that involves other departments at Aalborg University. The projects consist of multiple tasks, which are shortly outlined below. It is not intended that the candidate works on all tasks. The concrete tasks will be agreed upon with the supervisors, based on the candidate’s background and preferences.

• Task 1: Synthesis of quantum circuits. We intend to apply reinforcement learning. This task will include feasibility and scalability considerations (e.g., approximate solutions, application of symbolic data structures);
• Task 2: Simulation of quantum circuits with high-level structure and under noisy conditions. This task will include the extension of recent work on model-order reduction applied to quantum circuits. The extension will cover quantum programs with loops and various noise effects;
• Task 3: Equivalence checking of quantum circuits. This task will include the identification of suitable metrics for approximate equivalence and algorithms to efficiently compute approximation distances. A potential direction is the generalization to parallel GPU computations;
• Task 4: Correctness evaluation of quantum communication systems and quantum protocols. This task will include approaches such as statistical model checking and conformal prediction to efficiently assess a given design and identify bugs or bottlenecks;
• Task 5: Design and semantics of distributed quantum programming and modelling languages. This task will include the development of language features and formal semantics for programming and modeling distributed quantum systems, enabling correct composition, communication, and verification of quantum processes across multiple nodes.

Qualification requirements

Appointment as postdoc requires academic qualifications at PhD level. Due to the project’s angle, the candidate should have a strong background in at least one of the following areas: theoretical computer science (e.g., formal methods, design automation, algorithms) and reinforcement learning. The candidate should be open to practical computational experiments. Excellent spoken and written communication skills in English are expected.