Computing’s Top 30: Narayanan Rengaswamy

Narayanan Rengaswamy is one of our "Computing's Top 30 Early Career Professionals" for 2025. This program seeks to highlight an esteemed group of rising stars who earned this honor for their exceptional early-career achievements and role in driving advancements across the computing landscape. 

Introduction

I am an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA. My research is on error correction and fault tolerance for quantum computing, networking, communications, and sensing. I teach quantum computing as well as undergraduate-level signal processing and telecommunication theory.

What inspired you to pursue a career in technology?

Throughout my schooling, I was consistently strong in mathematics, and I enjoyed learning about telecommunications in high school. I was also excited about computer programming through some fun projects in high school, an example being a theater ticket booking system that I developed with a close friend. Hence, I naturally gravitated towards a career in technology and picked Electronics and Communication Engineering for my bachelor's degree. Since many in my family had a background in commerce and finance, which I didn’t enjoy very much, I was clear about a career in science and technology. This turned out to be a pivotal decision since I excelled in my undergraduate program, far beyond my and my family’s expectations based on my school performance. After experimenting with industry through an internship, I decided to pursue graduate school and enrolled in the Master of Science in Electrical Engineering at Texas A&M University.

What do you consider your highest achievement so far?

Though I was strong on coursework and was interested in a career in education, I wanted to explore research and see if I can be successful despite the uncertainties it brings with it. I was very fortunate to be advised by Prof. Henry Pfister, who mentored me towards publishing conference and journal papers as well as completing an exciting research internship at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs in Stuttgart, Germany. Since he had moved to Duke at the end of my first year at Texas A&M (and advised me virtually after that), I decided to start my PhD with him at Duke. Until my second year of PhD, my research continued to be in error correcting codes for classical applications such as telecommunications. After seeing a talk at Duke on quantum computing, I became very intrigued and spent a summer self-teaching the basics based on the famous textbook by Michael Nielsen and Isaac Chuang. I was completely captivated by the mathematical formalism and the exciting technology it enables. I volunteered to be the teaching assistant for my advisor’s course on error correction that Fall semester, which was co-taught by Prof. Robert Calderbank who would then become my PhD co-advisor. Prof. Calderbank invited me to give a couple of lectures on quantum error correction later that semester. My lecture sparked an idea in him that landed me my first paper in the field. I never looked back after that and I was very productive during the rest of my PhD, publishing 7 journal papers and 5 conference papers. My submission to the 2020 Quantum Information Processing (QIP) conference, the flagship event of the field, was one of the 73 papers to be accepted as talks out of the 283 submissions. This was the crowning jewel of my PhD and it put me on the map of the field. The journal paper I presented there is also my most cited work. To this day, I consider my transformation during my PhD (and the QIP talk) my highest achievement in my career.

How do you plan to continue or build on that success?

After my PhD, I was very fortunate yet again to secure a postdoctoral research position with Prof. Bane Vasic at the University of Arizona. I learned to build on my PhD success and led projects on completely new topics in quantum networking and error correction. I also led a collaborative $1.2M NSF proposal between Arizona and Duke, which was funded! The resulting publications greatly bolstered my confidence and helped me secure a tenure-track position in the same department. Thanks to my diverse experience, I lead a research group working on a variety of problems in quantum computing, networking, and sensing. I plan to build on the past success by collaborating with researchers who have complementary expertise and by pursuing physically motivated research directions with large potential impact on the technology of tomorrow.

I have already begun to work with physicists, mathematicians, quantum algorithm experts, and computer architects in this pursuit.

Who do you draw inspiration from and how did that motivate you in your education or career?

I am inspired by many people in life, beginning with my parents and grandparents who have instilled in me through their way of life the importance of humility, service, dedication, and the drive to understand concepts and topics deeply. As an example, my grandfather obtained a gold medal in Sanskrit after enrolling in a degree post-retirement! On the technical side, all my advisors and mentors have left an indelible mark on me. I am specifically drawn and inspired by the sheer technical breadth of the work by my mentors Prof. Kenneth Brown at Duke and Prof. Saikat Guha at the University of Maryland. Today, what I most enjoy about research is the process of associating ideas from seemingly different topics and using that to formulate novel research problems and solutions.

How are you currently involved in the tech community aside from your job (volunteering, open-source projects, mentoring, etc)?

Besides my regular teaching and university duties, I contribute a significant amount of my time towards organizing conferences and workshops, reviewing papers, and serving as an Editor for the journal “Quantum”. I am also developing a five-week summer course on an application-oriented introduction to linear algebra for STEM undergraduates, which I think will help them prepare for many fields such as data science, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and graphics. For the past four years, I have co-taught a 3.5-hour short course on error correction for quantum networks with my PhD students as part of the annual winter school of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Quantum Networks, where I am an investigator. We had close to 600 participants most recently in January 2026! I will be leading the entire winter school effort from next year, which typically runs (virtually) for a week in January with two short courses each day.

What advice would you give to young professionals or recent graduates who are trying to enter your field?

For young individuals trying to enter quantum technology, my primary advice is to strengthen their foundations in the field through multiple avenues such as coursework, certificates, summer/winter schools, internships and hackathons. Since the technical topics can be counterintuitive and very abstract, investing that initial time is crucial to appreciate the topic and become adaptable in this fast-moving area.

Make Connections

You can connect with Narayanan Rengaswamy on LinkedIn.

Your Success Starts Here

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