Biography of Krysta Svore

This October, IEEE will host Quantum Week, a virtual event featuring the first-ever IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering. Quantum Week will take place 12-16 October and bring the international quantum community together to showcase quantum research, practice, applications, standards, education, and training. The conference will be available on-demand until the end of November.

One of the keynote speakers at the event will be Dr. Krysta Svore, the general manager of quantum software at Microsoft. While we are years away from realizing the full potential of quantum computing, Dr. Svore has played an active role in making quantum education more accessible and working toward the development of a comprehensive, scalable quantum computer. What follows is a biography of Dr. Krysta Svore that highlights her background in quantum computing and offers key insights into her notable accomplishments, publications and patents, and current work.

Background in quantum computing

Education

Dr. Svore completed her undergraduate education at Princeton University, receiving a bachelor of arts in mathematics along with minors in French and computer science in 2001. For her graduate work, Dr. Svore studied computer science under Dr. Alfred Aho and Dr. Joseph Traub at Columbia University and was a visiting graduate researcher at both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology. She earned a doctor of philosophy in computer science with highest distinction from Columbia University in 2006.

Research focus

In her research, Dr. Svore focuses on quantum algorithms and how to implement them in a quantum system. This includes everything from how to code these algorithms in a high-level programming language to how to implement them in hardware and how to optimize the resources they require.

Her research team also designs algorithms and applications for quantum computers in areas such as quantum chemistry, materials science, and optimization. By collaborating with a range of individuals including theorists, experimentalists, algorithm designers, engineers, mathematicians, and more, her team is actively working to develop a comprehensive, scalable quantum computer. As Dr. Svore describes, she is passionate about quantum computation and the possibility of using quantum computers to solve some of the world’s most challenging problems.

Dr. Svore is also interested in machine learning algorithms, both classical and quantum. She has particular interest in learning to rank algorithms, web search and information retrieval, and the dynamics of the web and its users over time.

Notable accomplishments

Promoting undergraduate quantum education

Microsoft is a member of the Northwest Quantum Nexus (NQN). This coalition of research and industrial organizations in the Pacific Northwest and neighboring regions aims to advance quantum information sciences (QIS) research and the development of a QIS-trained workforce.

As part of this collaboration, Dr. Svore teaches an introductory course at the University of Washington that focuses on the practical implementation of quantum algorithms. She recently published a paper reflecting on the experience. In this paper, she highlights how the course centered on hands-on programming and allowed students to complete self-paced programming exercises rather than traditional writing assignments. As she reports, this approach proved effective in contributing to student learning outcomes and serves as a guide for other instructors seeking to adopt a practical approach to quantum computing.

Associations and accolades

Highlighting her expertise in the field of quantum information science, Dr. Svore chaired the Microsoft Research group’s 2017 Quantum Information Processing Conference. Her accomplishments, however, are not limited to Microsoft research collaborations and events. Dr. Svore is also a member of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Science and Technology (ISAT) study group. Additionally, she is a member of the Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee of the Department of Energy.

Beyond this, Dr. Svore is a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, and she serves as a representative for the Academic Alliance of the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT). Dr. Svore is also an active member of the American Physical Society (APS) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Dr. Svore has received numerous awards and other accolades over the course of her career so far. Notably, in 2010, she won the Yahoo! Learning to Rank Challenge with a team of colleagues, and she received an ACM Best of 2013 Notable Article award. Additionally, in 2018, Business Insider named her one of the thirty-nine most powerful female engineers.

Publications and patents

Complementing her notable accomplishments as an educator and researcher are Dr. Svore’s publications and patents. To date, she has published over forty refereed articles and filed over twenty patents in the areas of machine learning and quantum computing.

The IEEE Xplore database includes several of Dr. Svore’s published articles and presentations. These address topics including codebreaking with quantum computing, design automation for quantum architectures, and more generally, the quantum future of computation.

Current position and work

Presently, Dr. Svore is the general manager of quantum software at Microsoft and leads Microsoft’s Quantum Architectures and Computation (QuArC) group. Notably, this group created Azure Quantum, which is an open-source quantum development kit intended to spur and encourage further development of quantum applications and help solve optimization problems.

You can learn more from Dr. Svore and her forward-looking work on Wednesday, 14 October during her keynote presentation, “Quantum Learning: Applying Quantum Ideas to Classical Computing,” at QCE20. The conference is part of IEEE’s Quantum Week, which will bring the international quantum community together virtually to showcase quantum research, practice, applications, standards, education, and training. Registration for the event is now open.

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