photo of gushu sitting on stairs outside of physical sciences north

Featured Spotlight: Gushu Li – PhD student in ECE

In his own words – Interviewed during 2021 year

  • Hometown: Yangzhou, Jiangsu, China
  • Previous Degrees: Bachelor of Engineering in EE, Tsinghua University, Master of Science in ECE, UCSB
  • Degree Sought from UCSB: 5th yr Ph.D.
  • Advisor / Lab: Yuan Xie & Yufei Ding, SEAL Lab
  • Gushu’s Personal webpage: https://sites.google.com/view/gushuli
  • Hobbies and Interests: Badminton, Aviation, Traveling

Gushu’s Research

  • Main Area of Research: Quantum Computing
  • Research Interests: Quantum Compiler, Quantum Computer Architecture, Quantum Programming Language
  • Important Conferences: presented work at these conferences – Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS), International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA)
  • Important Awards & Honors: ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN) Distinguished Paper Award @ OOPSLA’20, National Science Foundation (NSF) Quantum Information and Science Education Network (QISE-NET) Triplet Fellow Grant Award
  • Professional Memberships: Student member of Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), American Physical Society (APS)
  • Master’s Thesis or Dissertation: “Towards High-Performance, Efficient, and Reliable Quantum Computing System” (tentative dissertation title)
  • Publications: Google Scholar

Favorite things about

  • Department: Our faculty members do leading research and instruct high-quality courses. Our staff members are very friendly, professional, and they are always willing to help.
  • UCSB: UCSB has a very beautiful campus and comfortable environment for students to work, study, and enjoy life.
  • Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara is a chill, peaceful place with natural ocean views, hiking trails, and good weather throughout the year.

Gushu and his research

Tell us about your research:

My research features the emerging Quantum Computer System and studies how to deeply optimize the effectiveness, efficiency, and reliability of quantum computation by attacking critical problems at multiple technology stacks.

How and why did you get into your area of research?

I discussed my Ph.D. research plan with my advisor and we found that quantum computing was our common interest.

Why did you select UCSB and Computer Engineering in regards to your research?

UCSB is one of the leading research institutions in the area of quantum computing. My advisors are very supportive and I think it is the ideal place to pursue my research in the area of quantum computer engineering.

What do you find rewarding about your research?

I feel most excited when the algorithms/tools I have developed in my research projects are adopted by industry products and used by many other people.

Thoughts on working in a group research environment:

I have been fortunate to work in a large research group where students are pursuing different research projects and you can learn a lot by talking with your peers. My advisors are always very helpful, giving me a lot of advice and encouragement. We have worked together to resolve many challenges when we initiate the quantum computing research in our group.

UCSB Prides itself on its collaborative atmosphere, give some examples of how you collaborate:

We closely collaborate with the quantum teams at IBM, Amazon, Cisco, and Intel. We also collaborate with other quantum computing teams from UCSB Quantum Foundry.

Academics at UCSB

Strengths of the graduate program:

The ECE graduate program is a large program offering many research directions and courses. You will be able to study and communicate with many other students of different backgrounds and cultures.

Favorite course:

Advanced Computer Architecture (ECE 254A) by Prof. Yuan Xie. In this course, Prof. Xie taught us not only the graduate-level computer architecture knowledge but also the long history of the evolutions in computer architecture. This helps us understand the hidden true cause of many development and design decisions and is very helpful to our vision on the entire computer engineering industry.

Describe your Graduate Student Researcher (GSR) and/or Teaching Assistant (TA) experiences:

As a GSR: literature reading, discussing research ideas and progress with the advisors, implementing your ideas, paper writing, group meeting and discussion.
As a TA: I was a TA in ECE 152A. We six TAs worked together to design assignments, hosting lab sessions and office hours, proctoring midterms and finals.

Life as a graduate student

Quality of life as a graduate student and how you balance school, work, social, and family life:

Life quality is very important since research is a long journey and you will possibly have to deal with some pressure. I make schedules ahead to arrange my work, social, and family life.

What is your social life like?

I live in the family housing of UCSB and the housing staff arranged many community activities for us. Our research group also has BBQ at Goleta beach that is located close to campus.

Tell us about your summer break:

I did two internships at IBM Quantum in the last two summer breaks. I think it is great to have some industry experiences in the summer and those experiences can help with my research.

Advice to prospective graduate students:

Think about your life and career goal before making decisions about whether to pursue a Ph.D. since it will be a very large investment. Talking with senior people and peers in your field will be a great help.

Future Plans...

Where will your research take you next and what are your future Career Goals:

I hope to join academia after graduation. I am on the job market this year, looking for a tenure-track faculty position.