Ellie D'Hondt

After a previous life in quantum computation, I am currently investigating how computer science, and in particular the current trend of ubiquitous computing, can aid on the technological side of sustainable development, while at the same time contributing to raising people’s awareness of the issues at hand. Within the brand-new BrusSense research project I am investigating how one can use participatory sensing to manage pollution in our common environment, the atmosphere. Participatory sensing appropriates everyday mobile devices such as cellular phones to form interactive, participatory wireless sensor networks that enable public and professional users to gather, analyse and share local knowledge. In my research I develop this technique for urban environmental pollution mapping, in particular focusing on noise, microclimate and atmospheric pollution. This data is measured on the mobile phones, with or without help of external sensors, geo-temporally tagged, and gathered and visualised at the project's website. We are currently investigating the accuracy of pollution maps created through participatory measuring campaigns, a new, scalable approach almost orthogonal to the current governmental and EU-regulated techniques for pollution mapping, which rely on simulation models. It is my plan to implement this research in the Brussels area as an effort to improve living conditions in the city.

In the past my research has focused on quantum computation, a fascinating new area of computer science. However, quantum programs are currently devised at a very low level, where one relies on intimate knowledge of quantum mechanics to leapfrog the usual abstraction mechanisms that we are used to in classical computation. My goal is to start a systematic, bottom-up exploration of the expressiveness of quantum computations by developing a quantum programming paradigm. My focus has been on measurement-based quantum computation because in this context there exists an assembly language known as the measurement calculus. I have developed a distributed version of the measurement calculus as a first low-level quantum programming language for distributed quantum protocols, an active area of research. This language is compositional and context-free and has associated meta-logical reasoning techniques. Essentially it is a formal framework which is now ready for implementation in a concrete quantum programming context. My recent research attempts to move to a higher-level quantum programming language, in particular by focusing on correlations as the main driving force behind quantum computations, and beyond.