PCEC News
GVSU Student to Pursue Ph.D. in Computer Science at Penn State University
May 04, 2021
Collin Beaudoin started his studies as a Computer Engineering undergraduate at Grand Valley State University (GVSU) in the Fall of 2015. As a graduate of West Catholic High School, he brought to GVSU 18 credits of Advanced Placement courses. As a part of Grand Valley’s Computer Engineering Co-Op program, he was able to obtain 3 semesters of programming experience at Dominion Systems while completing his undergraduate degree. He was eventually hired on as a full stack developer, and during the COVID-19 pandemic he transitioned into a mobile developer position. During his time as an undergraduate, he also participated in GVSU’s Men’s Rugby Club.
Over the course of Collin’s work in the Master’s program, with the help of the Computer Information Systems department, he’s been able to fuel his interest in research, especially in the field of quantum computing. Collin is currently finishing his Master’s degree in Computer Information Systems. For Collin’s Master’s project, he has been collaborating on the development of a quantum computing simulator called QuEST, which is being developed at the University of Oxford. QuEST uses either OpenMP, MPI, or CUDA to accelerate the execution of simulated quantum circuits. The simulation of quantum computing is extremely time-consuming and requires large amounts of memory, therefore, it makes sense to use parallel processing to decrease the execution times of these simulations and to allow for larger-scale simulations. Collin’s project resulted in the creation of an algorithm to multiply dense Hermitian matrices onto quantum state-vectors that fit with QuEST’s framework. His work on the project was co-advised by Professors Kurmas and Trefftz.
Collin has been accepted at Penn State University to pursue a Ph.D. in Computer Science. He will start his doctoral studies this fall and will join Dr. Swaroop Ghosh’s LOGICS group. Please join us in wishing him well on the next phase of his academic career!
Visit the GVSU School of Computing website.