Bio

Thomas Vidick’s research is situated at the interface of theoretical computer science, quantum information and cryptography. He is interested in applying techniques from computer science, such as complexity theory, to study problems in quantum computing. He has investigated the role of entanglement in multi-prover interactive proof systems and obtained the first substantial computational hardness results on the power of entangled provers. Entanglement also plays a major role in quantum cryptography, and he has made important contributions to the field of device-independent cryptography. He is also interested in using quantum information theory to shed new light on fundamental techniques in theoretical computer science such as semidefinite programming and approximation algorithms.

Vidick received a B.A. in pure mathematics from Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, a Masters in Computer Science from Universite Paris 7 and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. His Ph.D. thesis was awarded the Bernard Friedman memorial prize in applied mathematics. After a postdoctoral position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, supervised by Scott Aaronson, he joined the California Institute of Technology in 2014 and was named Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences in 2018. He is director of the Center for the Mathematics of Information (CMI). He holds visiting positions at the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore and the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo. In 2020-2021 he was awarded an FSMP Research Chair in Paris, France. In 2017 he was named a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar. In 2019 he received a Presidential Early-Career Award (PECASE). His paper “A multi-prover interactive proof for NEXP sound against entangled provers”, with Tsuyoshi Ito, was co-awarded the best paper award at FOCS’12.

News articles related to my work

• Our result that MIP* =RE was reported on by Quanta magazine, Nature News, Science News, and other outlets. For a personal take, see my blog post. For a more technical introduction, see my co-author’s blog post.
• Quanta magazine article from June 2019 on our randomness generation paper, with Christiano, Brakerski, Mahadev and Vazirani.
• Phys.org article from October 2014 on my paper with Vazirani on device-independent quantum key distribution.
• MIT news piece from July 2012 on my paper with Ito.

Online talks

You can see me talk about my research in the following recorded talks.

General-audience talks

• A public lecture (in French) delivered at the Institut Henri Poincare in Paris, as part of the special semester on Analysis in Quantum Information Theory.
• An introductory talk presenting some of my research in quantum cryptography at the Caltech Computes conference in November 2016.

Tutorials

• Three lectures on “Quantum Protocols” at a Winter School on the Mathematics of Quantum Computation organized at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in December 2019: the first and second lecture on delegated computation with a single server and a partially quantum client (the first lecture focuses on blindness and the second on verifiability), and the third lecture on using entanglement to achieve two-server delegation with a classical client. (See the UCSD lecture notes in my teaching page for related notes.)

• At QIP’19 in Boulder, Colorado I gave a 3-hour tutorial on the topic of “Verification of Quantum Computation”: see part 1 and part 2. Slides for the tutorial are available in ppsx and (without the animations) pdf.

Technical talks

• MIP* = RE. Invited talk at CCC’2020, given online on 2020-07-28.
• A complexity-theoretic approach to disproving Connes’ Embedding Problem. Introductory talk given at the Banff workshop on The Many Faceted Connes Embedding Problem, Banff, Canada, 2019-07-15.
• Classical Zero Knowledge Arguments for Quantum Computations. Invited talk at special day on Blockchains, Micropayments and Zero Knowledge (ZK Day 2019), Simons Institute, Berkeley, 2019-04-13.
• A Cryptographic Test of Quantumness and Certifiable Randomness from a Single Quantum Device. Invited talk at QCRYPT 2018, Shanghai, 2018-08-27.
• Unitary correlation sets. Workshop on Approximation Properties in Operator Algebras and Ergodic Theory. IPAM, Los Angeles, 2018-05-02.
• Entanglement requirements for non-local games. Plenary talk at QIP 2018. Delft, Netherlands, 2018-01-18.
• Tests for n qubits. KITP conference on Frontiers of Quantum Information Physics. KITP, Santa Barbara, 2017-10-10.
• Rigorous RG algorithms and area laws for low energy eigenstates in 1D. QIP’17. Seattle, 2017-01-19.
• Interactive proofs for local Hamiltonians. Workshop on the Frontiers of Quantum Information and Computer Science. QUICS, University of Maryland, 2015-10-01.
• The quantum PCP conjecture. Quantum Hamiltonian Complexity boot camp at the Simons Institute. Berkeley, 2014-01-17.
• Fully device-independent quantum key distribution. Plenary talk at QIP’13. Beijing, 2013-03-23.
• MIP* contains NEXP. Invited talk at QIP’13. Beijing, 2013-01-22.

Advising

Graduate students

• Alexander Poremba
• Jiaqing Jiang
• Hsin-Yuan Huang (w./ John Preskill)
• Spencer Gordon (w./ Leonard Schulman)
• Jenish Mehta (w./ Leonard Schulman)

Graduated students

• Milan Cvitkovic
• Andrea Coladangelo

Undergraduate students

• Laura Lewis. Summer 2020, Implementing Remote-State Preparation on a Noisy-Intermediate Size Quantum Device.
• Jack Maxfield. Summer 2020, Quantum proofs of space.
• Tina Zhang. Summer 2018, Classical zero-knowledge arguments for quantum computations.
• Marc Muhleisen. Summer 2018 SURF, Using Quantum Games to Test Clifford Group Relations. Moved on to Part III tripos at Cambridge.
• Gideon Leeper. Summer 2018 SURF, Classification and Computability for Nonlocal Games.
• Jalex Stark. 2017-2018, moved on to Jane Street.
• Chinmay Nirkhe. 2016-2017, moved on to grad school at Berkeley.
• Shannon Wang. Summer 2015 SURF, moved on to grad school at UCSD.
• Nick Haliday. Summer 2015.

Postdocs

Current:

• Atul Arora
• Ulysse Chabaud
• Lynn Chua
• Andras Gilyen

Former:

• Alexandru Gheorghiu, now a research fellow at ETH.
• Anand Natarajan, now an assistant professor at MIT.
• John Wright, now an assistant professor at UT Austin.
• Piyush Srivastava (CMI postdoc 2014-2016), now at TIFR.
• Omar Fawzi (2016), now an assistant professor at ENS Lyon.
• Gil Cohen (CMI postdoc 2015-2016), now at Princeton.
• Stacey Jeffery (IQIM postdoc 2014-2016), now a senior researcher at CWI.

Service

• Director, Center for the Mathematics of Information (CMI).
• Managing Editor for Theory of Computing.
• Editor for Quantum.
• Editor for ACM Transactions in quantum computing.
• Editorial Board member at Physical Review A.
• Member of the Steering Committee of the ITCS (Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science) series of conferences.
• Co-editor for the SICOMP special issue dedicated to the best papers from STOC’18.
• Program Committee member for QIP 2012, QCRYPT 2012, FSTTCS 2013, QIP 2014, STOC 2014, RANDOM 2014, QCRYPT 2014, ITCS 2015, TQC 2015, ITCS 2016, QIP 2016, CCC 2016, FOCS 2016, ICALP’17, QCRYPT’17 (chair), STOC’18, TQC’18, ITCS’19, RANDOM’19, ITCS’20 (chair), STOC’21.
• Refereed for journals SICOMP, JACM, TOC, Nature, Complexity, QIC, PRL, PRA, PRX and conferences STOC, FOCS, ITCS, CCC, APPROX/RANDOM, Crypto, QIP.

Workshop organization

• Together with Andrew Childs, Ignacio Cirac, and Umesh Vazirani, I co-organized a "summer cluster" on Challenges in Quantum Computation at the Simons Institute in Berkeley, from May 29 to July 20, 2018. The cluster included a one-week workshop, from June 11-15, 2018. See this page for the workshop schedule and videos of the talks.
• Following up on the summer cluster, we are organizing a semester-length program at the Simons Institute: The Quantum Wave.
• I organized the 2016 SoCal theory day at Caltech, on November 11th 2016.
• In October 2015, together with Artur Ekert, Renato Renner, Miklos Santha and Umesh Vazirani I organized a small workshop on foundations of randomness at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) in South Africa. See the webpage or this blog post and follow-up posts (first talk, day 1, day 2, day 3) for information on the workshop.
• In February 2014 I co-organized (with Dorit Aharonov and John Watrous) a one-week workshop on Quantum Games and Protocols at the Simons Institute in Berkeley. This was the first out of three workshops in the special semester on Quantum Hamiltonian Complexity at the institute. See the Simons website for videos of all talks, this blog post for a summary of the workshop, this one describing a (personal) scientific outcome of the workshop.

Funding

• I am a co-PI on NSF's "[Challenge Institute for Quantum Computation](https://ciqc.berkeley.edu/)" (CIQC)
• AFOSR MURI award "Scalable Certification of Quantum Computing Devices and Networks", 2018-2021.
• CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar, 2017-2019.
• I am a PI of the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter (IQIM), a National Science Foundation Physics Frontiers Center (2018-2023) at Caltech directed by John Preskill.
• NSF CAREER "Interactions with Untrusted Quantum Devices", 02/2016-01/2021.
• Air Force Young Investigator Award "Towards a Secure Quantum Network", 2016-2019.
• Okawa Foundation Research Grant 2015-2016.