Matthew Prest

Matthew Prest

He/Him

Physics PhD candidate at the City University of New York working on quantum information theory.

IBM Qiskit Certification + Advocate

less than 1 minute read

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Qiskit

For a long time I’ve been meaning to take IBM’s quantum computing with Qiskit developer exam and, after a lot more studying than I was expecting I finally took it and passed! While I was well prepared for the questions on quantum information theory and properties of circuits at the abstract level, many of the detailed qiskit code segments, or specific implementation syntax were challenging. I was grateful to take the full assessment exam and to have the time to dedicate a couple of weekends to mastering Qiskit beyond the more straightforward project uses I’ve implemented in the past.

The developer exam is just the beginning of my IBM Qiskit journey, as I have recently been approved as a Qiskit advocate! I’m looking forward to working through the progression tiers, promoting Qiskit and contributing to the codebase, there are already a few pull requests brewing in my mind! I’m very thankful to IBM for accepting me and I am exciting to see what the future has in store!

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ACM PQQS 2026

4 minute read Easy

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ACM PQQS 2026

This week I had the chance to attend and present at ACM’s post quamtum and quantum security conference in Silicon Valley. I’d spent the last year and a bit working on my second quantum cryptography publication titled “Multi-client Verifiable Blind Delegated Quantum Computing,” which is quite a mouthful. I enjoyed working on this project as much, if not more than my earlier quantum Byzantine agreement paper however this definitely took more work. This was a lesson in stumbling around an unfamiliar field, slowly uncovering what has been done before and where we could make a contribution. In hindsight, I wish I had taken more time with my literature review at the beginning to get a clearer picture of the research frontier. I am grateful to have learned a tremendous amount throughout the process and the opportunity to present at an ACM conference was a great reward. My slides and the full paper are available on my site if you’re curious!