Anantha S Rao

Anantha S Rao

Ph.D Physics UMD

Anantha Rao

My name is Anantha Rao. (pronounced : An-an-tha, Kannada: ಅನಂತ; meaning : infinity).

I am a second-year Ph.D. student at UMD Physics and QuICS. I am fortunate to be advised by Prof. Michael Gullans. I also closely work with Prof. Justyna Zwolak at NIST, and Prof. Menno Veldohorst at TU Delft. Previously, I received my BS-MS (Physics) from IISER Pune, India, working with Prof. M. S. Santhanam at IISER Pune and the IBM-Quantum Research team. My pronouns are He/Him.

My research interests lie in the intersection of Quantum Information and Condensed Matter Physics. My research aims to study many-body quantum systems, understand their behaviour, and harness their non-classical properties to build useful, scalable devices for practical applications. To this end, I employ and develop analytical, numerical, and statistical approaches. Some of the current research projects are along the direction of :

Theory:

  • Manybody interacting hybrid systems and with dynamic feedback.
  • Semiconductor quantum dot devices (device theory, shuttling quantum information between processors and automaton of experiments).
  • Characterization, Verification, and Validation of quantum-information processing devices (QCVV)
  • Quantum-enhanced machine learning and tensor networks.

This website is where I share my interests, lessons, and insights on various topics. A lot of things that I gain from my research do not end up being part of the final research paper that I write but I would be very happy to talk and learn from the research audience. I strongly believe in science being a collective and collaborative effort, and I look forward to discussing ideas.

If you are interested in my CV (updated Nov 2023) here it is!

Recent Highlights

  • Conducted a tutorial on learning electron configurations through NMR spectroscopy with machine learning at Brown AI Winter school (YT link).
  • During my master’s thesis, I worked with IBM Research on developing new variational quantum algorithms for generative machine learning.
  • At IISER Pune, I worked with Prof MS Santhanam on various problems related to quantum chaos, many-body localization, and quantum search algorithms.
  • In 2021, I co-founded and led the software team of Curem Biotech, the first student-led startup at IISER Pune (We raised $> $50k$).
  • An avid supporter of FOSS (Free and Open source software), I also write-code for various open source organizations (Julia, iGEM, and ML4SCI)

Pet projects

  • QeVAE (2022 - present): A quantum-enhanced variational autoencoder
  • QCompiler (2021 - present): A quantum compiler that executes quantum circuits and gates
  • QuantChaos (2021 - present): A introductory set of tutorials and code on the quantum kicked rotor
  • DelemaDetect (2020): Deep learning for Malaria detection
  • PacMal (2020): Peptides against Cerebral malaria. (insilico modeling of peptide drugs)

Misc

  • I like and use Goodreads for keeping track of reading lists.
  • I used quora before but abandoned it after aggressive paywalls.