Yuqian (Claire) Huo 霍玉倩

Hey Y'all! I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Computer Science at Rice University. I am honored to be supervised by Dr. Tirthak Patel working on quantum computing and its applications. Before joining Rice, I completed my Master's degree at Washington University in St. Louis, where I was fortunate to work with Dr. Ning Zhang on Control Flow Integrity (CFI) for real-time systems.

My research focuses on quantum computing, AI, and computer systems. I develop systems and software techniques to improve the performance, quality, and security of quantum cloud and AI workloads, to advance the reliability, efficiency, and practical utility of quantum computing.

Most recently, I was an Applied Scientist Intern at Amazon's AWS Center for Quantum Computing, developing machine-learning methods for automated calibration of superconducting quantum devices.

Awards

Ken Kennedy-HPE Cray Fellowship - One of only three recipients across Rice University, 2026
WHPC Rising Star Recognition - Recognized at the Supercomputing conference (SC), 2026
Nettie S. Autrey and Lodieska Stockbridge Vaughn Fellowships - Departmental nominee, 2026
SandboxAQ Global Travel Scholarship - Recipient of the competitive scholarship for academic travel, 2025
DAC Young Fellow - Selected as a Young Fellow of the 61st Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2024
Conference Travel Awards - Awarded travel awards to attend DAC24, 2024

News

[Nov. 2026] [Talk] Excited to present my research at the Women in HPC (WHPC) at SC26 in Chicago!

[Nov. 2026] [Poster] Excited to present a research poster at the Ken Kennedy Institute’s 40th Anniversary Celebration.

[Oct. 2026] [Award] Honored to receive the Ken Kennedy-HPE Cray Fellowship, one of three recipients across Rice!

[Sep. 2026] [Award] Selected for the Women in HPC (WHPC) Rising Star Recognition at SC26 in Chicago!

[Jun. 2026] [Talk] Presented our papers Anchor and NEST at ACM SIGMETRICS 2026!

[Jun. 2026] [Experience] Joined the AWS Center for Quantum Computing as an Applied Scientist Intern to develop automated quantum-device calibration methods.

[Mar. 2026] [Talk] Presented a lightning talk and poster titled “Tackling Pervasive Performance Variability in Quantum AI and Cloud Workloads” at the Quantum Student Success Summit (QS3).

[Feb. 2026] [Talk] Gave a lightning talk and presented a poster at the Energy HPC & AI Conference.

[Nov. 2025] [Paper] Our papers Anchor and NEST were accepted to ACM SIGMETRICS 2026!

[2025] [Award] Received the SandboxAQ Global Travel Scholarship to support academic travel.

[2024] [Award] Selected as a DAC Young Fellow at the 61st Design Automation Conference!

Publications

Anchor: Reducing Temporal and Spatial Output Performance Variability on Quantum Computers
Yuqian Huo, Daniel Leeds, Jason Ludmir, Nicholas S. DiBrita, Tirthak Patel
Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems (SIGMETRICS), 2026
[Paper] [Code]

Three Birds with one Stone: Improving Performance, Convergence, and System Throughput with Nest
Yuqian Huo, David Quiroga, Anastasios Kyrillidis, Tirthak Patel
Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems (SIGMETRICS), 2026
[Paper] [Code]

QS3: Designing and Implementing an Interactive and Student-Centered Quantum Research Summit
Nicholas S. DiBrita, Yuqian Huo, David Román-García, Nai-Hui Chia, Anastasios Kyrillidis, Tracy Volz, Tirthak Patel
IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE), 2026

WSBD: Freezing-Based Optimizer for Quantum Neural Networks
Christopher Kverne, Mayur Akewar, Yuqian Huo, Tirthak Patel, Janki Bhimani
International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS), 2026
[Preprint]

Revisiting Noise-adaptive Transpilation in Quantum Computing: How Much Impact Does it Have?
Yuqian Huo, Jinbiao Wei, Christopher Kverne, Mayur Akewar, Janki Bhimani, Tirthak Patel
IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD), 2025
[Paper] [Code]

Position: Quantum Neural Networks Need Checkpointing
Christopher Kverne, Mayur Akewar, Yuqian Huo, Tirthak Patel, Janki Bhimani
ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Storage and File Systems (HotStorage), 2025
[Paper]

Modeling and Simulating Rydberg Atom Quantum Computers for Hardware-Software Co-design with PachinQo
Jason Ludmir, Yuqian Huo, Nicholas S. DiBrita, Tirthak Patel
Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems (SIGMETRICS), 2025
[Paper] [Code]

ReCon: Reconfiguring Analog Rydberg Atom Quantum Computers for Quantum Generative Adversarial Networks
Nicholas S. DiBrita, Daniel Leeds, Yuqian Huo, Jason Ludmir, Tirthak Patel
IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD), 2024
[Paper] [Code]

CIVSCOPE: Analyzing Potential Memory Corruption Bugs in Compartment Interfaces
Yi Chien, Vlad-Andrei Bădoiu, Yudi Yang, Yuqian Huo, Kelly Kaoudis, Hugo Lefeuvre, Pierre Olivier, Nathan Dautenhahn
Safety and Verification Proceedings (KISV), 2023
[Paper]

Talks & Posters

Three Birds with One Stone: Improving Performance, Convergence, and System Throughput with NEST
Poster - Ken Kennedy Institute's 40th Anniversary Celebration, Nov 2026, Rice University

Anchor: Reducing Temporal and Spatial Output Performance Variability on Quantum Computers
Talk - Women in High Performance Computing(WHPC), Supercomputing Conference (SC), Nov 2026
Talk - ACM SIGMETRICS 2026 Conference, Jun 2026
Talk - SandboxAQ Scholarship Virtual AQ Conference, Mar 2026
Talk - Rice University Research Seminar, Nov 2024

Three Birds with One Stone: Improving Performance, Convergence, and System Throughput with NEST
Talk - Rice University Research Seminar, Sep 2026
Talk - ACM SIGMETRICS 2026 Conference, Jun 2026

Tackling Pervasive Performance Variability in Quantum AI and Cloud Workloads
Poster - Ken Kennedy Institute Retreat, Mar 2026
Lightning talk and poster - Quantum Student Success Summit (QS3), Mar 2026 [Schedule]
Lightning talk and poster - Energy HPC & AI Conference, Feb 2026 [Video]
Poster - Rice Department of Computer Science PhD Event, Feb 2026

CIVSCOPE: Analyzing Potential Memory Corruption Bugs in Compartment Interfaces
Poster - ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC), Jun 2024

Teaching

Teaching Assistant - COMP 341: Intro to AI (Rice University), Fall 2024

Teaching Assistant - COMP 421: OS and Concurrent Programming (Rice University), Spring 2023

Teaching Assistant - CSE 332S: Object-Oriented Programming (Washington University in St. Louis), Spring 2021, Summer 2021, Fall 2021