Allen Liu Receives 2025 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award

June 10, 2026

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) announced today that Allen Liu, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, has received the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for his dissertation "Learning Theoretic Foundations for Understanding Quantum Systems."

Professor Liu's thesis—written toward his PhD earned at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—reshapes our understanding of quantum systems through perspectives in learning theory.

As stated by the ACM in their prize designation: "His dissertation resolved two major questions that have been considered central to understanding how to harness exotic quantum phenomena and use computing to simulate physics. Firstly, given many copies of a quantum state at thermal equilibrium, can we measure that quantum state and estimate its local interactions? Conversely, given a description of the local interactions of the quantum state and the temperature, can we prepare the state that describes what it looks like at equilibrium? Liu developed groundbreaking algorithms that not only resolved these problems but proved a new physical law in the process. The quantum computing community is still trying to unravel the far-reaching implications of his work."