David Williams-Young
David Williams-Young is a Principal Quantum Software Architect at Microsoft Quantum, where he serves as software lead for quantum applications. His work focuses on quantum computing applications in chemistry and materials science, including quantum algorithms, classical simulation methods, and the development of tools that bridge quantum computing and computational many-body theory. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was as a Scientist in the Applied Mathematics and Computational Research Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he developed exascale electronic structure methods and software for DOE Leadership Computing Facilities. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Washington, specializing in relativistic electronic structure theory. He is the author of numerous open-source computational chemistry libraries and has served as a major contributor numerous quantum chemistry software packages.
Session
Quantum computers promise to tackle strongly correlated molecular systems that defeat classical electronic-structure methods, but realizing quantum utility depends on every stage of the pipeline, not just the quantum algorithm. QDK/Chemistry, an open-source package in the Microsoft Quantum Development Kit, treats this entire pipeline as a single, modular Python framework. Immutable data classes and stateless algorithms with fixed interfaces let researchers swap backends without changing application code. This talk introduces QDK/Chemistry's composable architecture, shows how classical and quantum stages interoperate to minimize quantum resources, and offers design patterns applicable beyond quantum computing.