Alexander Kunitsa received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the Russian Academy of Sciences (Research Center in Chernogolovka, Moscow region). Before joining Zapata Computing, he pursued a career in Computational and Quantum Chemistry working with Professor So Hirata at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Professor Ksenia Bravaya at Boston University. His research has been focused on computational studies of electronically metastable species, non-Hermitian quantum mechanics and stochastic electronic structure methods. In his current role at Zapata, Alexander works on applications of the quantum algorithms to chemical problems.
I can’t help admiring the interdisciplinary nature of quantum computing and its mathematical elegance. Besides, I love the intellectual challenges that it presents!
I hope that quantum computing will enable the accurate solution of the electronic structure problem, which is a prerequisite for understanding complex phenomena in biophysics, such as photosynthesis, magnetoreception, or enzyme catalysis.