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. Before joining Caltech he was a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has also held visiting positions at the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore, the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, and the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing in Berkeley. 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.
Advising
Graduate students
Undergraduate students
- Jalex Stark (2017-2018, now at Berkeley)
- Chinmay Nirkhe (2016-2017, now at Berkeley)
- Shannon Wang (Summer 2015, now at UCSD)
Postdocs
Service
- Managing Editor for Theory of Computing.
- Editor for Quantum.
- Member of the Steering Committee of the ITCS (Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science) series of conferences.
- 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.
- 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 am co-organizing a "summer cluster" on Challenges in Quantum Computation at the Simons Institute in Berkeley, from May 29 to July 20, 2018.
- 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