Ding "Recognizing Innovation"
CS assistant professor Yufei Ding recognized in the CoE's Convergence magazine for receiving a 2020 NSF Early CAREER award
Yufei Ding is one of nine assistant professors in the UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering to receive a prestigious Early CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) since April 2020. An NSF CAREER award includes up to $500,000 in funding over five years to support the pioneering research conducted by junior faculty and to advance excellence in education.
“We are tremendously proud of the nine assistant professors for receiving this highly esteemed award,” said Rod Alferness, dean of the College of Engineering. “They are shining examples of the high-quality junior faculty we have in the College of Engineering, whose cutting-edge research in emerging fields, ranging from quantum computing to vine robots, will push the boundaries of scientific discovery in ways that will benefit society.”
Ding has developed an innovative plan to improve the efficiency and accuracy of quantum applications in the next generation of quantum devices. In the project funded through her NSF Early CAREER award, Ding seeks to design state-of-the-art architecture to improve the stability of quantum computing by focusing on compilation and optimization. Compilation is the process by which a computer program takes a source code written in one program language and translates it into a second language to create an executable file or outcome. Presently, the longer a quantum algorithm runs, or compiles, the more its performance degrades because of noise or environmental disturbances, such as vibration or temperature changes. As part of the project, Ding will create a new high-level programming language to optimize algorithms and develop advanced testing and debug support.
“Our work has the potential to benefit major quantum computing applications, such as quantum chemistry, and to expand to materials, finance, and stochastic/numerical mathematics,” said Ding. “The success of our agenda will enable a more complete and efficient hardware stack and support quantum applications on near-term devices.”
COE/CLS Convergence magazine (S21) – "Faculty Awards – Recognizing Innovation" (pg. 9)
