Morgridge Hall, UW–Madison
Morgridge Hall, UW–Madison

Charles Yuan

I’m an assistant professor of computer science at UW–Madison, where I am a member of the madPL and quantum computing groups.

I’m looking for Ph.D. students! If you have experience in programming languages or quantum computing, I encourage you to read my work, learn about Madison, and apply.

You do not need to contact me to apply, but are welcome if you’d like to propose a project.

Contact Email ude.csiw.sc@nauyselrahc or find me in Morgridge 7663.

Research I study how to program a quantum computer to practically realize quantum algorithms. Quantum computers promise incredible speedups for tasks such as simulation, search, and optimization. However, achieving this speedup in practice forces us to fundamentally rethink the abstractions, such as data structures and control flow, that we use to write algorithms as programs. My research thus builds a new software stack of languages, libraries, and compilers to manipulate and reason about quantum information.

Teaching I teach CS 839: Programming Languages for Quantum Computing this fall.

Service I am on the PC for PLDI 2026 and PLanQC 2026 and ERC for ASPLOS 2026.

Biographical Here are my CV and Google Scholar. I completed my Ph.D. at MIT CSAIL with Michael Carbin. I’ve worked at Google Quantum AI and Hudson River Trading.

Selected Publications

Additional Publications

Preprints and Peer-Reviewed Workshop Papers