Chinmay Nirkhe

Teaching

Current: CSE 599c: Modern Quantum Complexity Theory
Past courses:

I am grateful to work with some wonderful doctoral students:
Assaf Harel, Nicholas Kocurek, Shreya Gupta, and Arjun Aggarwal.

It is my pleasure to co-host Joe Slote as a postdoc.

Click here for a complete list, video recordings, and slide decks.
All authorships are alphabetically listed and signify equal contributions.

Separating QMA from QCMA with a classical oracle
John Bostanci, Jonas Haferkamp, Chinmay Nirkhe, and Mark Zhandry.
STOC 2026.
[arXiv:2511.09551] [Recorded lecture] [Blog Post by L. Chandrasekaran]
NLTS Hamiltonians from good quantum codes
Anurag Anshu, Nikolas Breuckmann, and Chinmay Nirkhe.
QIP 2023 (Long plenary talk). CCC 2023 (Invited Talk). STOC 2023.
[arXiv:2206.13228] [News Article] [Simons Institute Blog Post] [Proceedings Version]
Quantum search-to-decision and the state synthesis problem
Sandy Irani, Anand Natarajan, Chinmay Nirkhe, Sujit Rao, and Henry Yuen.
QIP 2022. CCC 2022.
[arXiv:2111.02999] [Proceedings Version]
On the complexity and verification of random circuit sampling
Adam Bouland, Bill Fefferman, Chinmay Nirkhe, and Umesh Vazirani.
Nature Physics 2018. ITCS 2019. QIP 2019.
[arXiv:1803.04402] [Journal Version] [News Article]

IBM Quantum, Cambridge
Research Staff Scientist. 2022 - 2024.
University of California, Berkeley
Ph.D. Computer Science. 2017 - 2022.
Advisor: Umesh Vazirani | Thesis: Lower bounds on the complexity of quantum proofs
California Institute of Technology
B.S. Mathematics, B.S. Computer Science. 2013 - 2017.

University of Washington

General academia advice

Prof. Chinmay Nirkhe
Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering
University of Washington
Box 352350
Seattle, WA 98195-2350

Preferred pronouns: he/him
Email: nirkhe@cs.washington.edu
Office: Gates Center Room 217, 3800 E Stevens Way NE Seattle, WA 98195