After finishing undergraduate studies at the Indian Institute of Science, Atithi joined as a Ph.D. student in 2018 at the department of Physics, Rutgers University, New Jersey where he has primarily worked on quantum information science. Specifically, his research interests lie in quantum tomography, quantum control, tensor networks, and machine learning-assisted estimation problems in quantum information. Working with Manuel Rudolph, Jing Chen, Jacob Miller, and Alejandro Perdomo-Ortiz, he has been part of the effort at Zapata to understand the symbiotic relationship between tensor networks and quantum circuits. This has the potential to truly identify possible quantum advantages in quantum/quantum-inspired machine learning approaches over their classical counterparts.
Quantum computing is a field that is extremely promising because it harnesses quantum mechanics which encompasses one of the major successes of 20th and 21st-century Physics. However, currently, it is in a developmental stage with many challenges such as scalability and finding potential advantages at various stages in its path to large scale. This creates an interesting playground inviting Physicists, Engineers, Computer Scientists, and Chemists to work together. This uniqueness has driven me to pursue a career in quantum information science.
Always surrounding myself with talented people. I truly believe in “if you can’t be a genius, you should just hang out with them.”
Try to be equally excited about results and non-results while working in science.