Aws Abarghouthi Delivers PLDI 2026 Keynote on the Future of Quantum Computing
Albarghouthi presented a talk on “The Rise & Collapse of a Quantum State.”
Aws Albarghouthi, Associate Professor of Computer Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, gave a keynote at the 2026 ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), the premier forum for programming languages and programming systems research. His 70-minute talk, “The Rise & Collapse of a Quantum State,” opened the final day of the conference on June 19 in Boulder, Colorado. Albarghouthi is the only UW–Madison researcher in recent history to receive this prestigious honor. PLDI keynote speakers have included Turing Award winners such as Sir Tony Hoare and Alfred Aho.
The talk looked at quantum computing through the lens of programming languages research. A quantum computation begins as an idea in a scientist’s mind, becomes a sequence of instructions, and finally “collapses” on a quantum processor.
Albarghouthi argued that the programming languages community has a major opportunity to shape this pipeline, from high-level abstractions and language design to compilation and formal verification. His group at UW–Madison works on automatically synthesizing the software stack for future quantum computers, and the talk drew on that research.
Congratulations, Professor Albarghouthi!