Kate Smith

Kate Smith is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Northwestern University, affiliated with the McCormick School of Engineering. She holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Southern Methodist University (SMU), along with MS and BS degrees in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics from the same institution. Her research focuses on quantum computing, specifically in system architecture, optimized compilation, error mitigation, and security. Prior to joining Northwestern in 2024, she worked at Infleqtion managing the Superstaq compiler team and as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago under the CQE/IBM program. She has contributed to over 25 peer-reviewed publications and served on technical committees for major conferences like MICRO, ISCA, and DAC.

Education: SMU (PhD 2019, MS 2015, BS in EE/Math 2014). Professional experience includes roles at EPFL (Switzerland), Texas Instruments, and the Darwin Deason Institute for Cyber Security. Her honors include the 2022 HPCA Best Paper Award, MIT EECS Rising Star (2021), and the IEEE TC-MVL Early Career Award (2021).

Research interests span quantum compilation, distributed systems, qudit processing, and quantum security. She co-organized the 2023 CCC Workshop on Next Steps in Quantum Computing and chaired the 2022 ISMVL conference. Her work emphasizes bridging hardware-software gaps to enable scalable quantum systems.

Grants and collaborations include the EPiQC group at the University of Chicago and projects funded by the Swiss NSF. Teaching experience includes courses on quantum computing fundamentals and digital design at SMU, University of Chicago, and adjunct roles.