Adam Holmes

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About

I am a research scientist working in quantum information and quantum error correction at NVIDIA Applied Research.

I previously worked on quantum information theory and simulation as a Quantum Information Scientist and Quantum Information Department Head at HRL Laboratories (now a part of IBM Research).

I received my master's degree and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2020 in computer science and quantum system architecture, and a bachelor's degree physics concentrating in computer science from Cornell University in 2016. I am primarily interested in efficient quantum error correction and error mitigation protocols, quantum algorithm design and architectural optimization, and interesting ways to prove scaling properties of quantum information processing techniques. Through my academic career I have worked in research characterizing properties and fabrication techniques of superconducting materials, modeling liquid helium cooling manifolds for synchrotrons and linear accelerators, building compiler toolchains for quantum computing platforms, and performing detailed system design of quantum information processing devices.

Projects

Quantum Information and Quantum Error Correction

Quantum Logic Codes: Complete Transversal Logical Clifford Instruction Sets for High-Rate Stabilizer Quantum Error Correcting Codes

Universal lower bounds on the depth needed to generate a full logical Clifford algebra, and a high-rate code family with a constant-depth transversal Clifford instruction set.

Efficient Quantum Circuits for Accurate State Preparation of Smooth, Differentiable Functions

Matrix product state methods that encode Gaussian, lognormal, and related distributions into linear-depth circuits at high fidelity.

Magic-State Functional Units: Mapping and Scheduling Multi-Level Distillation Circuits for Fault-Tolerant Quantum Architectures

First detailed hardware designs of space-time optimized magic-state factories for surface code error-corrected machines.

Quantum Algorithms

Quantum Computing for Corrosion-Resistant Materials and Anti-Corrosive Coatings Design

npj Quantum Information · 2025

An end-to-end workflow and resource analysis for simulating corrosion inhibition in magnesium and niobium alloys.

Fullerene-Encapsulated Cyclic Ozone for the Next Generation of Nano-Sized Propellants via Quantum Computation

Logical and physical overhead estimates for phase estimation of cyclic ozone confined in fullerene cages, a candidate high-impulse propellant.

Quantum Resources Required for Binding Affinity Calculations of Amyloid Beta

A computational workflow and quantum resource estimates for metal binding affinities in an intrinsically disordered protein.

Architecture

A Digitally Controlled Silicon Quantum Processing Unit

A cryogenic CMOS controller, superconducting ribbon cable, and 54 quantum dot exchange-only device advancing the state of the art by an order of magnitude.

NISQ+: Boosting Quantum Computing Power by Approximating Quantum Error Correction

Approximate error correction, accelerated in classical hardware, to extend the compute volume reachable by near-term machines.

Impact of Qubit Connectivity on Quantum Algorithm Performance

Quantum Science and Technology · 2020

Mapping QFT, Grover diffusion, and Jordan-Wigner parity workloads onto grid, ladder, and linear arrays to price limited connectivity.

Compilers, Software, and Tools

CUDA-Q Logical: Retargetable Compilation for Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing

Compiler infrastructure mapping logical programs onto heterogeneous QEC codes, fault-tolerant execution models, and real-time classical control.

An LLVM-Based C++ Compiler Toolchain for Variational Hybrid Quantum-Classical Algorithms and Quantum Accelerators

C++ language extensions, a quantum executable format, and a compiler path that builds a variational program once for all of its iterations.

Compiler Management of Communication and Parallelism for Quantum Computation

A Multi-SIMD architecture and the schedulers that map program descriptions onto its parallel regions to shorten execution time.

Contact

If you have questions about my research, software, papers, or thoughts about quantum computing or physics, feel free to contact me through my social media.

Written and coded by Adam Holmes