Alexander Poremba

I am a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, hosted by both Vinod Vaikuntanathan and Peter Shor. I am affiliated with the Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Department of Mathematics. I received my PhD from Caltech, where I was fortunate to have been advised by Thomas Vidick.

My research lies at the intersection of quantum computation and cryptography.

Contact: poremba (at) mit (dot) edu
Office: Stata Center, 32-G678

Research

I use tools from cryptography to study fundamental questions in quantum information science. Recently, I've been especially interested in quantum pseudorandomness and how to obtain quantum advantage in cryptography.

Curriculum Vitae

PhD, Computer Science, California Institute of Technology (2018 - 2023)
MSc, Physics, University of Heidelberg (2015 - 2017)
BSc, Mathematics, University of Heidelberg (2011 - 2015)

I was a long-term visitor at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at the University of California, Berkeley, to attend the 2020 spring program The Quantum Wave in Computing. In the summer of 2018, I was awarded a Quantum Computing Summer Fellowship to work at Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico. Before I came to Caltech, I was also a long-term visitor at the University of Copenhagen, where I was fortunate to work with Gorjan Alagic at the Centre for the Mathematics of Quantum Theory.

A detailed academic CV is available upon request.

Publications

For a more up-to-date list, visit my Google Scholar page.

  • On Quantum Chosen-Ciphertext Attacks and Learning with Errors (2018)
    Gorjan Alagic, Stacey Jeffery, Maris Ozols and Alexander Poremba.
    Published in Cryptography 4 (1), 10 (2020): Special Issue on Quantum Cryptography and Cyber Security.
    Contributed talk at QCrypt 2018, Shanghai, China, and TQC 2019 at the University of Maryland, USA. [Talk]
  • Quantum-Assisted Quantum Compiling (2018)
    Sumeet Khatri, Ryan LaRose, Alexander Poremba, Lukasz Cincio, Andrew T. Sornborger and Patrick J. Coles
    Published in Quantum 3, 140 (2019).

Teaching Assistantships

- Caltech: CS 152: Introduction to Cryptography (Instructor: Prof. Thomas Vidick)
- Caltech: CS 101-3 Quantum Algorithms and Programming (Instructor: Dr. Alexandru Gheorgiu).
- Caltech: CS/PH 120 Quantum Cryptography (Instructor: Prof. Thomas Vidick).
- University of Heidelberg: Introduction to Computer Science (Instructor: Prof. Katja Mombaur)
- University of Heidelberg: Real Analysis II (Instructor: Prof. Hans Knüpfer)
- University of Heidelberg: Real Analysis I (Instructor: Prof. Winfried Kohnen)

Academic Services

Program committee: TQC 2024, QCRYPT 2024, YQIS 2021
Reviewer: Quantum, Physical Review A, QIP, STOC, Eurocrypt, SODA, TQC, QCrypt, TCC, PQCRYPTO.