Urmila Mahadev is an American mathematician and theoretical computer scientist known for her work 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 ...

and

quantum cryptography Quantum cryptography is the science of exploiting quantum mechanical properties to perform cryptographic tasks. The best known example of quantum cryptography is quantum key distribution which offers an information-theoretically secure solution ...

Education and career

Mahadev is originally from

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

, where her parents are physicians. She became interested in quantum computing through a course with

Leonard Adleman Leonard Adleman (born December 31, 1945) is an American computer scientist. He is one of the creators of the RSA encryption algorithm, for which he received the 2002 Turing Award, often called the Nobel prize of Computer science. He is also kno ...

at the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

, where she graduated in 2010. She went to 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 ...

for graduate study, supported by a

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF-GRFP) is a prestigious grant awarded annually by the National Science Foundation to approximately 2,000 students pursuing research-based Master's and doctoral degrees in the ...

. As a student of

Umesh Vazirani Umesh Virkumar Vazirani is an Indian-American academic who is the Roger A. Strauch Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and the director of the Berkeley Quantum Computation Center. Hi ...

at Berkeley, Mahadev discovered

interactive proof system In computational complexity theory, an interactive proof system is an abstract machine that models computation as the exchange of messages between two parties: a ''prover'' and a ''verifier''. The parties interact by exchanging messages in order t ...

s that could demonstrate with high certainty, to an observer using only classical computation, that a quantum computer has correctly performed a desired quantum-computing task. She completed her Ph.D. in 2018, and after continued postdoctoral research at Berkeley, she became an assistant professor of computing and mathematical sciences at the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

Recognition

For her work on verification of quantum computing, Mahadev won the

Machtey Award The Machtey Award is awarded at the annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) to the author(s) of the best student paper(s). A paper qualifies as a student paper if all authors are full-time students at the date of the submiss ...

at the

Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science The IEEE Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) is an academic conference in the field of theoretical computer science. FOCS is sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society. As writes, FOCS and its annual Association for Computing ...

in 2018, and in 2021 one of the three inaugural Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prizes for early-career achievements by women mathematicians.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mahadev, Urmila Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American mathematicians American women mathematicians American computer scientists Women computer scientists Theoretical computer scientists Quantum information scientists University of Southern California alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni California Institute of Technology faculty 21st-century American women