QSE Center chooses two INSPIRE Quantum Master awardees
Oxana Shaya and Kailyn Villaincourt © 2023 EPFL
We are pleased to announce that two outstanding female students, Oxana Shaya and Kailyn Vaillancourt, have been chosen to INSPIRE Quantum Master’s awards for their upcoming master’s studies at EPFL in the research areas represented at the QSE Center. They will be joining the laboratories of Prof. Zoe Holmes and Prof. Cristina Benea-Chelmus respectively, and will receive up to 10,000 CHF each to help with their studies and expenses.
These awards are given as part of the QSE Center’s mission to increase the presence of excellent female students and researchers in the domain of quantum science and engineering, where they unfortunately still remain underrepresented.
Oxana Shaya
Oxana Shaya began studying physics at RWTH Aachen out of curiosity to comprehend the natural world. Shewas drawn to mathematical formalisms and enjoyed multiple teaching activities in mathematics at RWTH. Furthermore, she was captivated by the powerful tool of machine learning and expanded on it by assisting in teaching introductory courses as well as at the Institute for Data Science in Mechanical Engineering.
Throughout her bachelor's thesis at the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology in Aachen, she critically examined potential applications of quantum computing in the manufacturing industry. Events such as the Womanium Hackatron 2022 and the Unitary Hack 2023 gave her valuable insights into quantum software. And by co-organising the Quarterly Lectures in Philosophy of Science, she attained a global view on quantum physics.
In 2022/2023 Shaya did an exchange at EPFL, joining Zoë Holmes's research group to investigate the trainability and generalisation of variational quantum algorithms. Through the INSPIRE Quantum Master Award, Shaya will join Holmes for a project on quantum generative modelling (QGM), where they will investigate how the trainability of quantum generative models is affected by the target distribution.
Kailyn Vaillancourt
Kailyn Vaillancourt is currently a student at the University of Waterloo in Canada studying Nanotechnology Engineering. In the past, she interned with various groups, both at Harvard University and her home school, the University of Waterloo. While at Harvard she joined the Capasso Lab working on simulating, fabricating, and characterizing meta surfaces and 2D materials. She went on to present one of her projects at CLEO 2023.
During the school terms she worked with Dayan Ban on Quantum Cascade Lasers (QCLs) and Zbig Wasilewski’s Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) system. Outside of lab and school life she is an avid runner and musician.
Vaillaincourt will join Cristina Benea’s HYLAB in Winter 2024 where she will be working on fabricating and characterizing electro-optic transducers for quantum applications.
EPFL Center for Quantum Science and Engineering