Julia Kempe is a French, German, and Israeli researcher in

quantum computing Quantum computing is a type of computation whose operations can harness the phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement. Devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers. Though ...

. She is currently the Director of the Center for Data Science at

NYU New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-United States Secretary of the Treasu ...

and Professor at the Courant Institute

Education and career

Kempe was born in

East Berlin East Berlin was the ''de facto'' capital city of East Germany from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as ...

, to a family of Russian descent. She moved to Austria in 1990, and did her undergraduate studies in mathematics and physics at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...

from 1992 to 1995, with a year as an exchange student in physics at the

University of Technology Sydney The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) is a public research university located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Although its origins are said to trace back to the 1830s, the university was founded in its current form in 1988. As of 2021 ...

. She then earned two

Master of Advanced Studies A Master of Advanced Studies or Master of Advanced Study (MAS, M.A.S., or MASt) is a postgraduate degree awarded in various countries. Master of Advanced Studies programs may be non-consecutive programs tailored for "specific groups of working pro ...

(DEA) degrees in France: one in mathematics in 1996 from

Pierre and Marie Curie University Pierre and Marie Curie University (french: link=no, Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, UPMC), also known as Paris 6, was a public university, public research university in Paris, France, from 1971 to 2017. The university was located on the Jussi ...

and another in 1997 in physics from the ''

École normale supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

''. She completed two doctorates in 2001. The dissertation for her Ph.D. in computer science from the ''

École nationale supérieure des télécommunications École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région ...

'' was entitled ''Quantum Computing: Random Walks and Entanglement'', and was supervised by Gérard Cohen. Her second Ph.D., in mathematics, was from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, with a dissertation entitled ''Universal Noiseless Quantum Computation: Theory and Applications'' and was jointly supervised by

Elwyn Berlekamp Elwyn Ralph Berlekamp (September 6, 1940 – April 9, 2019) was a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.Contributors, ''IEEE Transactions on Information Theory'' 42, #3 (May 1996), p. 1048. DO10.1 ...

and chemist

K. Birgitta Whaley Katherine Birgitta Whaley (born 1956) is a professor of chemistry at the University of California Berkeley and a senior faculty scientist in the Division of Chemical Sciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. At UC Berkeley, Whaley is the ...

. She joined CNRS at the University of Paris-Sud in 2001 (overlapping with postdoctoral studies at Berkeley and the Berkeley

Mathematical Sciences Research Institute The Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (SLMath), formerly the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), is an independent nonprofit mathematical research institution on the University of California campus in Berkeley, Califo ...

), joined the

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) ( he, אוּנִיבֶרְסִיטַת תֵּל אָבִיב, ''Universitat Tel Aviv'') is a public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Locate ...

faculty in 2007, and moved her CNRS position from Paris-Sud to Paris Diderot in 2010.. Between 2011 and 2018 she was a researcher in finance. She became director of the Center of Data Science at NYU and a professor at the Courant Institute in September 2018.

Awards and honors

In 2006, Kempe won the bronze medal of CNRS and the

Irène Joliot-Curie Prize The Irène Joliot-Curie Prize is a French prize for women in science and technology, founded in 2001. It is awarded by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, the Airbus Group corporate foundation, the French Academy of Scienc ...

of the French government. In 2009 she won the Krill Prize of the

Wolf Foundation The Wolf Foundation is a private not-for-profit organization in Israel established in 1975 by Ricardo Wolf, a German-born Jewish Cuban inventor and former Cuban ambassador to Israel. Ricardo Wolf Ricardo Wolf, the founder of the Wolf Foundat ...

, and in 2010 she won the ''Trophée des femmes en or'' (English: ) for her research. In 1998 she received a reward from ''

Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes The German Academic Scholarship Foundation (German: , or ''Studienstiftung'' for short) is Germany's largest and most prestigious scholarship foundation. According to its statutes, it supports "the university education of young people who, on ac ...

'' (English: "German Academic Scholarship Foundation") which was awarded to only 0.25% of students at the time. She became a knight in the National Order of Merit in 2010. In 2018, she was elected to the Academia Europaea.

Selected publications

*. *. *. *. *. Revised, '' SIAM Review'' 50 (4): 755–787, 2008,

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kempe, Julia Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century German mathematicians 21st-century German physicists German computer scientists 21st-century French mathematicians 21st-century French physicists French computer scientists 21st-century women mathematicians French women physicists German women physicists French women computer scientists German women computer scientists German people of Russian descent People from East Berlin University of Vienna alumni Pierre and Marie Curie University alumni École Normale Supérieure alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni New York University faculty Knights of the Ordre national du Mérite Quantum information scientists Members of Academia Europaea