Thomas E. Baker

Dr. Thomas E. Baker is an Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair in Quantum Computing for Modelling of Molecules and Materials at the University of Victoria. He holds joint appointments in the Departments of Physics & Astronomy and Chemistry. His research focuses on quantum computing, quantum algorithms, and entanglement renormalization, with applications to quantum chemistry and density functional theory. He leads the sensing and quantum materials cluster under the Office of the VPRI and is a member of Quantum BC and the Centre for Advanced Materials and Related Technology.

Education: M.Sc. (California State University Long Beach), PhD (University of California, Irvine), postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQ) at Université de Sherbrooke, and Fulbright U.S. Scholar at the University of York, UK.

Research interests include quantum information processing, quantum error correction, and tensor networks. His team develops the DMRjulia library, a Julia-based tool for entanglement renormalization computations. Recent work emphasizes quantum algorithm design for near-term quantum computers and theoretical foundations of quantum materials.

Scientific Awards: Fulbright U.S. Scholar (2018).

Teaching includes graduate courses on quantum physics, computational methods, and tensor networks. He actively mentors students across physics, chemistry, and computer science backgrounds.

Labs/Teams: Principal Investigator of the sensing and quantum materials cluster, co-developer of DMRjulia, collaborator in Quantum BC.