Elena Giovannini
More copies, more answers.
Second-year PhD: I work on multi-copy protocols and classical shadows — ways to learn things about quantum data that a single copy can never tell you.
What I do
I'm in the second year of my PhD, working on quantum computers, a fundamentally different kind of computer from the ones we're used to, built on the laws of quantum mechanics. Despite how futuristic they sound, quantum computers still have limits: some operations you'd want to apply to the data just can't be performed directly or take too much time. However, some really smart scientists have found ways around these issues. One of the topics of my research focuses on further developing methods that make use of more copies of the quantum state, our data, to solve problems that cannot be solved with just one copy. The other main theme of my PhD is classical shadows, a framework co-developed by our supervisor to efficiently learn properties of quantum data; I focus on how to further develop this method and possibly combine it with the multi-copy protocols.
Why it matters
What I love about my research is how stimulating it makes every day. Quantum computing is still so young that many interesting questions remain open. I get to spend my days trying things that might not work, which makes it even more rewarding when they do, that's what makes it fun. But it also matters beyond my own curiosity: quantum computers could one day help in many fields. Getting there depends on solving basic problems first.