QuSoft is pleased to highlight the appointment of Dr. Stefano Polla, who officially joined our community on 1 April 2026 as an Assistant Professor across the Van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences (HIMS) and the Informatics Institute (IvI) at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). In his role as a senior researcher, Stefano is establishing a research group dedicated to exploring and developing quantum algorithms for chemistry, leading national and international research collaborations, and teaching at UvA.
“QuSoft has long been a historic center of expertise for quantum algorithms in the Netherlands, while remaining forward-looking, constantly evolving, and expanding its scope,” says Stefano. “It offers an ideal environment for interdisciplinary and cross-departmental research, and I look forward to collaborating with colleagues across UvA and CWI.”
Research Focus: Quantum Simulation and Early Fault-Tolerance
Stefano’s research bridges computational chemistry and quantum algorithms, treating molecular systems as a source of inspiration for hard computational problems naturally framed in quantum mechanics. At QuSoft, his group focuses on three core pillars:
Quantum Simulation in Early Fault-Tolerance: Developing noise mitigation and circuit optimization strategies to execute algorithms like Quantum Phase Estimation (QPE) on early fault-tolerant hardware.
Algorithms for Chemistry: Designing quantum routines with provable convergence for under-explored problems in computational chemistry, including molecular embedding and quantum-classical integration.
Quantum-Classical Synergies: Harnessing classical machine learning and AI powered by quantum-generated data to improve classical simulation capabilities.
Track Record and Strategic Collaborations
Stefano brings a strong background in quantum software development to QuSoft. Supervised by Tom O’Brien, he completed his PhD as a founding member of the Applied Quantum Algorithms (aQa) group in Leiden while working as a student researcher at Google Quantum AI. He subsequently led a research subgroup within aQa focused on quantum algorithms for chemistry, working closely with the theoretical chemistry group at VU Amsterdam.
His key contributions include developing echo verification—a purification-based error mitigation technique tested on quantum hardware—and extending error mitigation protocols to early fault-tolerant QPE in work published in PRX Quantum alongside Google, Covestro, and QuSofter Alicja Dutkiewicz.
Stefano has been a key driver in the QC2 (Quantum Computing for Quantum Chemistry) collaboration uniting aQa Leiden, VU Amsterdam, and QuSoft. He also leads a national consortium on Quantum Software for Drug Design (QSDD) within the QDNL Forward Challenge in Life Sciences and Health, collaborating with active QuSoft members including Alicja Dutkiewicz, Freek Witteveen, and Kareljan Schoutens.
To read Stefano’s publications and preprints, visit stefanopolla.com/arxiv.
