The Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW) has awarded the second prize of the KNVI thesis prize for Computer Science and Information Technology to Matthew Skrzypcyk. He received the prize (1000 euros) because of his exceptional work during his Master’s thesis in the group of Stephanie Wehner, which resulted in promising solutions for quantum internet architectures and methods.

Matthew Skrzypczyk (Chicago, Illinois, United States, 1993) started his time at QuTech by winning the QuTech Master Scholarship. In the group of Stephanie Wehner, he dived into the theoretical research on quantum networks. Matthew: “I wanted to come to the TU and specifically QuTech because there is a lot of exciting research in quantum communication networks happening here. QuTech is rich in both experimental and theoretical research, so it’s incredibly helpful to be able to collaborate on furthering research in this field. As a theorist, I find it very valuable to be able to talk with experimentalists – they have hands-on experience with the systems, meaning the work I do gets tied back to reality.”

Before he even started his Master’s thesis, Matthew had already done very important work by developing the first link layer protocol for quantum networks. He travelled to Beijing to attend a conference where he was allowed to present the research. “It was one of the first research conferences I have attended and I was grateful to be able to share our hard work to such a large audience,” Matthew said.

From that moment on, Matthew was convinced: he wanted to continue researching quantum networks at QuTech. “The coolest part of the thesis is that I got to design a quantum network architecture. It can already run applications on near-term networks that are built using imperfect state-of-the-art devices.” Besides the research, he has also very much enjoyed the social side of QuTech: “The uitje trips are a really fun way to meet researchers from other groups in QuTech that you might not regularly interact with. It’s so nice to see what kind of people QuTech is made up of.”

With the prize of 1000 euros, Matthew is still considering what to spend it on: “Ideally one would use this money to maybe go on a trip of some sort or to celebrate with an extravagent gift. However, I think for the time being I will hold onto it and wait for a time where I can get together in a larger group to celebrate.”