Chris Heunen
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chrisheunen.bsky.social
Chris Heunen
@chrisheunen.bsky.social
computer scientist, mathematician, father, karateka, pianist
Reposted by Chris Heunen
The number of low-quality or fraudulent publications is rising to hundreds of thousands per year. It is time to reevaluate current publishing models and outline a global plan. Read the 'Reformation of science publishing: the Stockholm Declaration': royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... #RSOS 🧪
November 11, 2025 at 8:35 AM
Coverages, or Grothendieck topologies, describe when a collection of regions covers another region in a space. But what if your space is a spacetime? The topological space may have a causal order saying which (spacetime) points 'come before' which other points, for example.
October 21, 2025 at 9:13 AM
Have you ever wondered why we describe circuits with matrices? I mean, circuits are about tensor products, while matrices are about direct sums. This new paper with Louis Lemonnier and @manchegobaby.bsky.social gives a practically useful explanation: arxiv.org/abs/2510.05032.
October 7, 2025 at 9:00 AM
A new quantum programming construct: more abstract than circuits, capturing important examples elegantly and in fact universal, yet simple and intuitive. With prototype compiler and clean categorical semantics to boot!

With Alex Rice, Chris McNally, and Louis Lemonnier:
arxiv.org/abs/2507.11676
Quantum circuits are just a phase
Quantum programs today are written at a low level of abstraction - quantum circuits akin to assembly languages - and even advanced quantum programming languages essentially function as circuit descrip...
arxiv.org
July 17, 2025 at 11:15 AM
Reposted by Chris Heunen
I presented a taster poster on our upcoming work in distributed quantum compilation at the Uni of Edinburgh’s Informatics internal research showcase this Tuesday.

Focus: our upcoming model/hardware-agnostic intermediate representation for compilation of quantum programs (quite a mouthful I know!)
June 12, 2025 at 10:20 AM
Reposted by Chris Heunen
A discussion of the success of Bell Labs as a research organization and why we have nothing like it anymore.
Fabio Manganiello (@[email protected])
Why Bell Labs worked so well, and could innovate so much, while today’s innovation, in spite of the huge private funding, goes in hype-and-fizzle cycles that leave relatively little behind, is a qu...
manganiello.social
June 4, 2025 at 12:29 PM
A sound and complete finite system of equations to manipulate Toffoli+Hadamard quantum circuits you say, so you can automate circuit optimisation, you say? Why of course, here you go: arxiv.org/abs/2506.06835, with Wang Fang and @manchegobaby.bsky.social.
Hadamard-$Π$: Equational Quantum Programming
Quantum computing offers advantages over classical computation, yet the precise features that set the two apart remain unclear. In the standard quantum circuit model, adding a 1-qubit basis-changing g...
arxiv.org
June 10, 2025 at 11:06 AM
Reposted by Chris Heunen
90% of doing science is being open to new ideas.
May 31, 2025 at 6:14 PM
🚨 New preprint alert 🚨

Always wanted to know the connection between analytic limits and categorical limits? Tired of having to establish directed colimits of contractions when directed colimits of isometries suffice? You're in luck!

Now on www.arxiv.org/abs/2505.17432. With Matt Di Meglio.
M*-categories: Where limits in analysis and category theory meet
This article introduces M*-categories: an abstraction of categories with similar algebraic and analytic properties to the categories of real, complex, and quaternionic Hilbert spaces and bounded linea...
www.arxiv.org
May 28, 2025 at 9:28 AM
Reposted by Chris Heunen
Edinburgh local curious about how physics is shaping computer science?
Come along to this light & fun Pint of science session, and hear me ramble about quantum computers. Perfect for the curious general public!

Register here: pintofscience.co.uk/event/subato...
April 25, 2025 at 8:06 AM
Reposted by Chris Heunen
Two more days to get your application in! Apply now at quantuminformatics-cdt.ac.uk.
Applications are now open for September 2025 entry to the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Quantum Informatics. At least 16 fully-funded PhD studentships are available! Apply at quantuminformatics-cdt.ac.uk.
January 13, 2025 at 10:12 AM
Applications are now open for September 2025 entry to the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Quantum Informatics. At least 16 fully-funded PhD studentships are available! Apply at quantuminformatics-cdt.ac.uk.
November 25, 2024 at 7:09 PM
Reposted by Chris Heunen
📢PhD Positions in Quantum Computing
Applications are now open for the new CDT in Quantum Informatics. We are recruiting 16 students to start Sept 2025. Positions are fully funded for 4 years. Apply now:
quantuminformatics-cdt.ac.uk
QI CDT – EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Quantum Informatics
quantuminformatics-cdt.ac.uk
November 20, 2024 at 6:10 PM