A mathematician noted for his work in quantum cryptography has been selected to co-lead the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS) at the University of Maryland.
Carl Miller, a federal scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), was recently named co-director of QuICS for a five-year term, effective March 1, 2025. He will join fellow co-director Daniel Gottesman, the Brin Family Endowed Professor in Theoretical Computer Science at UMD, in guiding numerous research, scholarship and outreach activities at the center.
Launched in late 2014, QuICS is a partnership between UMD and NIST, focused on quantum computer science and quantum information theory. The center currently supports more than 100 researchers—14 QuICS fellows, five affiliate fellows, 20 postdoctoral scholars and 70-plus graduate students. Its leadership model features one co-director from UMD and one from NIST.
“We are in a terrific phase in the history of quantum technology,” Miller says. “Topics that were once theoretical are becoming real: quantum computers, quantum communication networks, post-quantum cryptography. There’s the future, and there’s also the present—both are exciting.”
He expressed his gratitude to Yi-Kai Liu, the previous NIST co-director of QuICS whom he follows, and also acknowledged former QuICS co-directors Andrew Childs, Jacob Taylor and Dianne O'Leary for their invaluable contributions to building and sustaining QuICS over the years.
“I am grateful for the work of all of our leaders, and it will be a privilege to continue running the great creative engine we have here at QuICS,” he says.
Miller’s own research is on the rapidly evolving relationship between quantum information science and cryptography. He studies innovative mathematical techniques to demonstrate the security of cryptographic protocols.
Miller earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Duke University in 2001 before pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, where he specialized in algebraic geometry.
After earning his Ph.D. in 2007, he took a postdoctoral position at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, followed by a role as an assistant research scientist in computer science. In 2016, he joined UMD as an adjunct assistant professor in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies with an affiliate appointment in the Department of Mathematics.
—Story by Melissa Brachfeld, UMIACS communications group