The professional headshot. Yes, I clean up nicely.
What I do
Over a decade of quantum research, from theoretical condensed matter physics to shipping real products. My specialty is transforming highly technical results into accessible deliverables — a partner-focused solution, a scientific report, or software for a government agency — and leading the teams that build them, on time and under budget.
My research roots are in theoretical condensed matter physics — strongly correlated systems, the kind of math that makes most people quietly leave the room.
I also coach — I like helping people do hard, scary things deliberately, whether that's a physics problem or a cliff face.
The Mind Summit Lab.
I run rock-climbing retreats for tech leadership teams — half-day, full-day, and multi-day expedition formats. The curriculum is fear itself: managing it, making decisions inside it, and building the kind of trust you can only earn sixty feet off the deck.
The path so far.
Quantinuum
Leading quantum computing work with US government partners — turning deep technical results into deliverables and products that customers, partners, and government research programs actually want.
Stealth startup
Driving teams to ship on time and under budget — tactical and strategic, all at once.
Atom Computing
Program-led the Atom Routing Compiler from research to production — multi-team plan across algorithms, compiler, and hardware. Led DARPA US2QC fault-tolerant resource estimation, developed and patented novel quantum optimization algorithms tuned for neutral-atom hardware, and ran enterprise customer programs end to end.
ColdQuanta (now Infleqtion)
Engineered a polished, customer-facing quantum software platform. Where I learned that industry physics is its own beautiful, chaotic discipline.
UC Santa Barbara
Non-ladder-rank faculty: when the pandemic hit, built the entire online physics instructional lab program from scratch — structure, delivery, execution — serving 3,000+ students over two years. That's where I figured out my future was in building things.
Ph.D., Condensed Matter Physics
Graduated mid-pandemic. Theoretical physics, world-class quantum computing research down the hall, and a dissertation nobody read but me and my committee.
B.S., Physics & Applied Mathematics
Graduated high school at 16, fell headfirst into physics, never really came back up for air.
Selected publications.
A decade of papers, from strongly correlated electrons to quantum algorithms. Full list on Google Scholar.
- 2024Quantum partial rejection sampling. Pawlak, K.A. & Epstein, J.M. To appear.
- 2023Subspace correction for constraints. Pawlak, K.A., Epstein, J.M., Crow, D., Gandhari, S., Li, M., Bohdanowicz, T.C., & King, J. arXiv:2310.20191.
- 2019Ferromagnetism and spin-valley liquid states in moiré correlated insulators. Wu, X.-C., Keselman, A., Jian, C.-M., Pawlak, K.A., & Xu, C. Physical Review B 100(2), 024421.
- 2018Emergent superconductivity in the weak Mott insulator phase of bilayer graphene moiré superlattice. Wu, X.-C., Pawlak, K.A., Jian, C.-M., & Xu, C. arXiv:1805.06906.
- 2017Instability of the non-Fermi-liquid state of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model. Bi, Z., Jian, C.-M., You, Y.-Z., Pawlak, K.A., & Xu, C. Physical Review B 95(20), 205105.
- 2015Emergence of superconductivity in a doped single-valley quadratic band crossing system of spin-1/2 fermions. Pawlak, K.A., Murray, J.M., & Vafek, O. Physical Review B 91(13), 134509.
Selected talks: invited talk at IEEE Quantum Week 2024, contributed talks at the APS March Meeting, seminar at the Colorado School of Mines.
Receipts.
Publications, code, and me explaining quantum computing to journalists.