Ryan Sweke
I am the Alexander von Humboldt German Research Chair of Mathematics and its Applications at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), in Cape Town, South Africa. I am also affiliated with the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Stellenbosch University, and I am an associate of the National Institute for Theoretical and Computational Sciences (NITheCS). Before joining AIMS I spent just over two years at IBM Quantum, and before that five years as a post-doc in the group of Jens Eisert at the Freie Universität Berlin.
I have broad research interests at the intersection of quantum computing, machine learning, cryptography and theoretical computer science. An up-to-date list of my publications can be found on Google Scholar.
I am slowly building a research group at AIMS. If you are a prospective Ph.D. student or post-doc, please see the opportunities page for more information on open positions and relevant fellowships.
I can be contacted via rsweke@aims.ac.za
news
| Sep 15, 2026 | Our new pre-print “Instantiating Microcrypt: Opportunities and obstacles via tailored state certification” appeared on the arXiv today. This one was long in the making, and I’m very happy about it, and excited to work on many of the open questions and directions! |
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| Sep 14, 2026 | Our submission to QTML2026 based on our recent paper “Distributed quantum property testing with quantum carrier pigeons” was accepted for a talk! |
| Sep 08, 2026 | Today our pre-print “Distributed quantum property testing with quantum carrier pigeons” appeared on arXiv. This paper merges our old pre-print “Distributed (quantum) testing with communication constraints” and Kenny Chen’s work “Distributed property testing with (quantum) carrier pigeons” in which he solved many of the open questions in our original work! Together we resolved one remaining open question, and so the full story is in this new pre-print :) |
| Jun 03, 2026 | Our paper “Scalably learning one-dimensional quantum many-body Hamiltonians from dynamical data” appeared in print today in IOP Quantum Science and Technology. |
| Jun 01, 2026 | Today Edem Boahen joined the Quantum@AIMS group as a post-doc. Welcome Edem! |
| May 19, 2026 | Our paper “Quantum kernels through the lens of entangled tensor kernels” appeared in print today in Physical Review Research. |
| Apr 23, 2026 | Our paper “Efficient Quantum Gibbs sampling with local circuits” appeared in print today in PRX Quantum. |
| Apr 07, 2026 | Our new pre-print “Distributed (quantum) property testing with communication constraints” appeared today on the arXiv. Thanks Mina and Chirag for a really really enjoyable collaboration! |
| Apr 01, 2026 | Today Zephrina Aniska Be joined the Quantum@AIMS group as a PhD student. Welcome Aniska! |
| Jan 06, 2026 | Today Zayd Pandit joined the Quantum@AIMS group as a PhD student. Welcome Zayd! |
| Nov 20, 2025 | Today a nice article appeared on the website of the Alexander von Humboldt foundation, which reports on the 1st AIMS Workshop and School on the Theory of Quantum Learning Algorithms and contains some nice pictures and quotes from participants. |
| Nov 17, 2025 | Today a nice profile of me appeared in the newsletter of the Free University Berlin. |
| Oct 30, 2025 | This past week we hosted the 1st AIMS Workshop and School on the Theory of Quantum Learning Algorithms, which was organized jointly with the group of Jens Eisert from the FU Berlin. The workshop was a great success, and I’m looking forward to the next one! |
| Oct 14, 2025 | Today a nice article (in German) appeared in the Tagespiegel newspaper describing the joint quantum computing efforts between AIMS and the FU Berlin. |
| Oct 13, 2025 | Our paper “On the average-case complexity of learning output distributions of quantum circuits” appeared in (digital) print in Quantum! |
| Oct 09, 2025 | Our new pre-print “Wavefunction Flows: Efficient Quantum Simulation of Continuous Flow Models” appeared today on the arXiv. |
| Oct 06, 2025 | Our paper “Learning Topological States from Randomized Measurements Using Variational Tensor-Network Tomography” appeared in print in PRX Quantum! |
| Sep 01, 2025 | I’m very happy to welcome two visitors to our group at AIMS. Florian Hirsch (from Heidelberg University) will visit until the end of October, and Pablo Rodriguez-Grasa (from the University of the Basque Country) will visit until mid-October. |
| Aug 25, 2025 | I’m happy to announce that two of our submissions were accepted for short talks at QTML2025! One, a joint submission with the group of Zoe Holmes on “kernel based dequantization of supervised QML” (based on this, this and this paper) and the other, a submission based on “Interactive proofs for verifying (quantum) learning and testing”. |
| Aug 22, 2025 | Today I gave a keynote talk entitled “Potential and limitations of quantum machine learning” at the QML for Africa workshop at the Deep Learning Indaba, held in Kigali, Rwanda. |
| Jul 09, 2025 | Press release from the FU Berlin, describing the 5 year DAAD funded co-operative project between the German Research Chair at AIMS, and the group of Prof. Jens Eisert at the FU Berlin. |
| Jul 01, 2025 | I now have two PhD positions and one postdoctoral fellowship available in my group. See the linked advertisements for more information, and please apply if you are interested! |
| Jun 26, 2025 | Our new pre-print “Efficient Quantum Gibbs Sampling with Local Circuits” appeared today on the arXiv. |
| Apr 17, 2025 | I will be program committee co-chair (together with Maria Schuld) for QTML 2025, in Singapore. |
| Mar 31, 2025 | Our new pre-print “Kernel-based dequantization of variational QML without Random Fourier Features” appeared today on the arXiv. |
| Mar 26, 2025 | Our new pre-print “New perspectives on quantum kernels through the lens of entangled tensor kernels” appeared today on the arXiv. |
| Mar 18, 2025 | Press release and short profile from Stellenbosch University. |
| Mar 12, 2025 | I gave a talk at WITS University entitled “The Potential and Limitations of Quantum Machine Learning” as part of the WITS\IBM seminar series. |
| Mar 03, 2025 | A nice profile of me appeared today, as featured scientist of NITheCS for March 2025. |
| Feb 24, 2025 | I gave a NITheCS colloquium entitled “Quantum Computing: Challenges and Opportunities” (video). |
| Feb 20, 2025 | Our paper “Potential and limitations of random Fourier features for dequantizing quantum machine learning” appeared in print in Quantum! I previously gave a talk about this work at IPAM (video). |
| Jan 24, 2025 | I gave a talk at Stellenbosch University entitled “Should we use parameterized quantum circuits for machine learning?” as a QSUN, SAQuTI and NITheCS seminar. |
| Jan 06, 2025 | I have officially started as German Research Chair of Mathematics and its Applications at AIMS! |