CQE Student Feature

MIT Theory of Computing: Sujit Rao

Research group name: Theory of Computing

Research Advisor: Anand Natarajan

Hometown, Country: Columbus, Ohio, USA

Academic History Prior to coming to MIT: BA in Mathematics and Computer Science at Cornell

What brought you to MIT? MIT has many faculty and students working in several related areas, including applied math, theoretical computer science, quantum information, and others. Having people with such a wide range of interests is becoming more important as research becomes more and more interdisciplinary.

What interests you the most about your research? Quantum computing still needs more experimental work to be realized in a lab, so sometimes it can be unclear what the direct impact of theoretical research is. But it can still give fundamental insights on topics such as entanglement, computational complexity, and classical algorithms and machine learning, and with any luck could help to build an experimental quantum computer. The most interesting theoretical results state fundamental limits on physical processes in very general settings and with minimal assumptions, which would give insights on very large classes of experiments.

What are your future plans? We are currently in a fast-paced time where interesting research on quantum computing and information is being done in both academia and industrial labs. I plan to continue doing research, though with so many options it is hard to say exactly where I might go even in the short term.