curriculum vitae

The long form.

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Education 3 entries
September 2022 - May 2027 (Expected)

PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Massachusetts Institute of Technology — Cambridge, MA

Research Advisor: Ila R. Fiete

September 2022 - 2024

SM in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Massachusetts Institute of Technology — Cambridge, MA

Dissertation Title: "Factorization and Compositional Generalization in Diffusion Models"
Research Advisor: Ila R. Fiete

August 2018 - May 2022

BS in Physics, Minor in Mathematics

Duke University — Durham, NC

Dissertation Title: "Robust Control in Trapped-ion Quantum Computers"
Research Advisor: Kenneth R. Brown

Positions 3 entries
May 2025 - August 2025

Research Team — Cognizant AI

San Francisco, CA — Supervisor: Xin Qiu, Risto Miikkulainen

July 2022 - September 2022

Algorithm Team — Zapata Computing

Boston, MA — Supervisor: Peter D. Johnson

May 2021 - August 2021

Theory Team — IonQ

College Park, MD — Supervisor: Yunseong Nam

Awards & honors 5 entries
2022

Alan V. Oppenheim Fellowship

MIT EECS Department - Awarded based on merit to cover first-year graduate stipend

2022

PME Graduate Fellowship

UChicago PME Department - Awarded based on merit to cover first-year graduate stipend (declined)

2022

QuICS Lanczos Graduate Fellowship

UMD College Park Physics Department - Awarded based on merit to cover three-year graduate stipend (declined)

2022

Rodney I. McCormick Award

Duke Physics Department - Awarded for outstanding undergraduate research to one graduating senior

2022

Sigma Pi Sigma Physics Honor Society Inductee

Duke Physics Department

Selected talks 4 entries
February 2024

Do Diffusion Models Learn Semantically Meaningful and Efficient Representations?

MIT Yang-Tan Collective Seminar, Jane Street Graduate Fellowship Workshop

March 2023

Modeling Quantum Algorithm Performance on Early Fault-Tolerant

APS March Meeting, Las Vegas, NV

December 2020

IBM Qiskit Advocate Demo

October 2020

Invited Speaker at Women in Quantum Summit II

Patents 3 entries
filed

Integrated Pulse Optimizer and Simulator for High-fidelity Two-qubit Gates on Trapped Ions

Kenneth Brown, Mingyu Kang, Qiyao Liang, Shilin Huang, Bichen Zhang, Leon Riesbos
US Patent Application No.19/165,948, Date of Application: September 16, 2025

filed

Efficient motional-mode characterization for high-fidelity trapped-ion quantum computing

Mingyu Kang, Qiyao Liang, Ming Li, Yunseong Nam
US Patent Application No.18/202,270, Date of Application: May 25, 2023

filed

Implementation of Batch Optimization for Robust Two-qubit Gates for Quantum Computation

Mingyu Kang, Kenneth Brown, Qiyao Liang, Bichen Zhang
US Patent Application No.63/175,228, Date of Application: April 15, 2021

Skills

Programming Languages and Frameworks

Python (PyTorch, SKLearn, Panda), Java, MATLAB, Mathematica, C, Julia, Assembly (MIPS), R, LaTeX, LabVIEW, Jupyter Notebook, Git

Languages

English (native-level), Mandarin (native-level), Spanish (elementary), Japanese (elementary)