Di Fang

About me: I am an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Duke University, and a faculty member of Duke Quantum Center (see here for a brief intro to DQC) and Rhodes information initiative at Duke (iiD). Prior to joining Duke, I was at University of California, Berkeley as a Morrey Visiting Assistant Professor at Department of Mathematics and Simons Quantum Postdoctoral Fellow at Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing (hosted by Prof. Lin Lin and Prof. Umesh Vazirani). I received my PhD in Mathematics from University of Wisconsin-Madison.
I currently serve as an editor of the journal Quantum. My research is funded in part by the NSF CAREER award DMS-2438074, NSF grant DMS-2347791 (role: PI) and the DOE QUACQ project (lead by Chemistry@Caltech; role: co-PI).

Research Interests: My mathematical expertise lies in applied and numerical analysis of partial differential equations. My current research focuses are the theory of quantum computing, numerical analysis for quantum algorithms, as well as classical algorithms for quantum simulation.

I am always looking for talented people joining the group!
How to apply to join the group? (click to see more)

• For prospective PhD students: Please apply through the Duke Math Graduate Program. See here for instructions. Be sure to select 'Computational Mathematics and Data Science' as your area of interest (this covers all topics related to computing, including quantum computing). When filling out the faculty list, please enter my name manually, as the list may not be up to date.
• For prospective postdocs: Potential postdoctoral positions will be offered as Elliott or Griffiths Assistant Research Professors in the Math Department. The application link will be posted by Duke Math on mathjobs in Oct or Nov.
• For undergraduate/master students interested in joining: Please note that the group's current research direction mainly focuses on the mathematical aspects of QIS, particularly numerical analysis of quantum algorithms. Please contact me with your CV, relevant courses (particularly in quantum and math, e.g., real analysis, proof-based ODE, numerical analysis, complexity theory, etc).

       

Email: di.fang@duke.edu
Office: 313 Gross Hall

Current Teaching:

• Spring 2025 - Math 790: Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Algorithms and Applications. See here for tentative course plan. Audit is welcome.
  A one-lecture crash course on Quantum Computing 101, designed to be accessible to a mathematical audience without a quantum background. Slides: Lecture 1 by Di @ Duke Summer School, August 2023. Further Tutorial Recording: See IPAM and RQS recordings listed below.

Selected Organizing and Recent Activities: (for a list of recent talks please see here. )

• Duke is excited to host QIP 2025: the largest international annual theory conference on quantum information. I am glad to be part of the local organizing committee (with Ken Brown, Iman Marvian, Frank Mueller, Daniel Stancil, and Margo Ginsberg and Mary Catherine Cole), and the program committee.
• I co-organize the Duke Society Women in Science (SWS) Distinguished Lecture and Lunch Series with Janice Crawford and Kathy Peterson for the academic year 2025-2026.
• I will be giving a tutorial during the tutorial session on quantum algorithms at the American Physical Society (APS) Joint March and April Meeting: Global Physics Summit 2025. I am also excited to be an invited speaker of the meeting this year in Division of Quantum Information.
• I presented on JMM 2025 AMS Special Session on Mathematical Quantum Chaos. I appreciate the invitation.
• Recent talk on mixing time estimation of open quantum systems via hypocoercivity. Recording from Workshop at Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing
• I was excited to be an invited speaker and summer school lecturer at QSim 2024 (the international conference on quantum simulation) and the RQS summer school. Summer School Topics: Quantum Algorithms for (Quantum) Dynamics Simulation: Numerical Analysis and Block-encoding. Recordings: Lecture 1 Lecture 2 Invited Talk
• I gave two tutorial lectures on Quantum Algorithms for Dynamics Simulation (aka quantum version of numerical differential equations) at IPAM. Youtube Videos: Lecture 1 and Lecture 2.
• Selected Service: I was a program committee member of QIP2024, QIP2025, QCTiP2025, TQC2025, a steering committee member of SIAM Quantum Intersections Convening, a local organizing committee member of QIP2025, a program organizer of the IPAM long program Mathematical and Computational Challenges in Quantum Computing, and a judge of the XPRIZE Quantum Applications competition (sponsored by Google Quantum AI with presenting partner the GESDA Foundation, hosted by the XPRIZE foundation). I have reviewed grants for NSF, NSERC, UKRI, etc.
  (click to see more activities)

  Nov 2023: I am excited and honored to be a plenary speaker at TriCAMS 2023.

  I served on Challenge Institute for Quantum Computation (CIQC) community council during 2021-2022 academic year. I am proud to be part of the Berkeley quantum ecosystem. To learn the quantum efforts and ecosystem at Berkeley, please see here for a quick 5-min video intro with me appearing shortly after 2min. :)

  I co-organized Applied Math Seminar (UC Berkeley / Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory) from Fall 2019 to Spring 2023.

  April 2023: Our work on Trotter observable error bounds has been accepted as a talk on TQC 2023.

  March 2023: I am honored to give an invited talk in the annual American Physical Society (APS) March Meeting.

  January 2023: I co-organized a SIAM special session on quantum algorithms in Joint Mathematics Meeting 2023 (JMM 2023) with Dong An and Lin Lin. Please click the underlined session name to see the tentative schedule. Hope to see you in Jan!

  November 2022: Our work on Hamiltonian learning has been selected as a short plenary talk on QIP 2023.

  October 2022: Our work (with Albert Tres, an undergraduate student advised by me) on Observable Error Bounds has been accepted by SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis.

  August 2022: My NSF proposal has been awarded by NSF Division of Mathematical Sciences for three years. I am happy to be the principle investigator.

  June 2022: I gave a talk on 2022 Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) Research Symposium, University of Minnesota. It was my first time attending the AWM annual meeting. Thanks Jingwei Hu and Sara Pollock for the invitation!

  April 2022: Our paper "Time-dependent Hamiltonian Simulation of Highly Oscillatory Dynamics and Superconvergence for Schrodinger Equation" was accepted as a talk on TQC 2022 (17th Conference on the Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication and Cryptography). Here is the talk recording. (talk is in-person in July)

  Feb 2022: I was invited to give a Mathematics Department Colloquium at UC Berkeley.

  Jan-Feb 2022: I was a long-term visitor at Program on Towards Classically Intractable Quantum Simulations of Physics and Chemistry, The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP), UC Santa Barbara, and was invited to give a talk in hybrid format. Here is the recording. (talk is in-person)

  Jan 2022: I was an invited speaker and session chair at Workshop on Quantum Numerical Linear Algebra, IPAM, UCLA. Here is the recording. (talk is virtual)