Amanda Xu
amandax@cs.wisc.edu
amandashoe
I am a CS Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison advised by Aws Albarghouthi. I am broadly interested in programming languages and formal methods. My current research is at the intersection of programming languages and quantum computing. My work is supported by a Cisco Systems Distinguished Graduate Fellowship.
I interned at AWS during the summer of 2023, working with Ankush Desai and Lauren Pick on checking database correctness.
I received my B.S. in Computer Science from Cornell University in May 2020 and spent a year working at AWS as a software engineer. As an undergraduate, I had the privilege of working on Petr4 with Nate Foster.
News
[May 2025] Honored to receive a Cisco Systems Distinguished Graduate Fellowship for 2025-26.
[Apr 2025] I will be interning this summer as a Student Researcher at Google Quantum AI!
[Mar 2025] Had fun presenting at APS March Meeting again and giving a tutorial on compiling quantum circuits at ASPLOS.
[Feb 2025] Two papers to appear at OOPSLA'25! Checking Observational Correctness of Database Systems and Dependency-Aware Compilation for Surface Code Quantum Architectures
[Feb 2025] Released wisq, our quantum-circuit compiler. pip install wisq
[Oct 2024] Optimizing Quantum Circuits, Fast and Slow accepted to ASPLOS'25!
[Mar 2024] Had a great time attending and giving a talk at APS March Meeting.
[Mar 2023] Synthesizing Quantum-Circuit Optimizers will appear at PLDI'23!
[Mar 2023] I will be returning to AWS this summer as an Applied Scientist Intern on Ankush Desai's team!
[Aug 2022] Qubit Mapping and Routing via MaxSAT will appear at MICRO'22!
[Aug 2021] Moved to Madison to start my Ph.D. at UW-Madison!
[Oct 2020] Petr4: Formal Foundations for P4 Data Planes will appear at POPL'21!
[Jun 2020] I started working as an SDE at Amazon Web Services (AWS) on the NYC Fraud Prevention team.
[May 2020] I graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. in Computer Science!
Publications
Optimizing Quantum Circuits, Fast and SlowAmanda Xu, Abtin Molavi, Swamit Tannu, Aws Albarghouthi
ASPLOS'25
[code] [slides]
Checking Observational Correctness of Database Systems
Lauren Pick, Amanda Xu, Ankush Desai, Sanjit A. Seshia, Aws Albarghouthi
OOPSLA'25
Dependency-Aware Compilation for Surface Code Quantum Architectures
Abtin Molavi, Amanda Xu, Swamit Tannu, Aws Albarghouthi
OOPSLA'25
Synthesizing Quantum-Circuit Optimizers
Amanda Xu, Abtin Molavi, Lauren Pick, Swamit Tannu, Aws Albarghouthi
PLDI'23
[code] [slides]
Qubit Mapping and Routing via MaxSAT
Abtin Molavi, Amanda Xu, Martin Diges, Lauren Pick, Swamit Tannu, Aws Albarghouthi
MICRO'22
Petr4: Formal Foundations for P4 Data Planes
Ryan Doenges, Mina Tahmasbi Arashloo, Santiago Bautista, Alexander Chang, Newton Ni, Samwise Parkinson, Rudy Peterson, Alaia Solko-Breslin, Amanda Xu, Nate Foster
POPL'21
Service
• PLDI 2025, Artifact Evaluation Committee• OOPSLA 2024, Artifact Evaluation Committee
• WACM Mentoring Program, Co-Chair (UW-Madison's chapter of ACM-W, ACM's Women in Computing)
• WACM Mentoring Program, Mentor