Kim Worrall

kim . worrall at ed . ac . uk
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About

My research focuses on the co-design of quantum programming languages and their compilers. I am a PhD Student in the Quantum Software Lab at the University of Edinburgh, supervised by Chris Heunen and Ohad Kammar. I have interned with the Quantum Cryptography Group at Quantinuum and in the Riverlane Compiler team, where I helped develop the backbone of their compiler for quantum error correction.
My current interests are:

  • Formalising common properties of quantum algorithms into primitives
  • Modular, hardware-aware compilers for quantum computing
  • Compiler frameworks like MLIR and xDSL
  • Understanding concurrency in quantum programming
  • Category theoretic approaches to quantum programming languages and foundations
  • Linking all of these together to design usable and efficient quantum programming languages!
I am also the Quantum Software Lab Seminar organiser - if you'd like to give a talk, please reach out!

Research Activity

You may have caught some of my work at:

Professional and Outreach Activity

I try to keep involved in the community and do a lot of outreach - we may have met via:

  • Student Volunteer - POPL 2026
  • Teaching 2025-2026: Introduction to Quantum Programming Tutor and Lab Organiser
  • Unitary Hack 2025: Supervising bounties for inconspiquous, an xDSL-based quantum compiler. Come contribute!
  • Student Volunteer - EuroLLVM 2025

Events Attended

We may also have met at:

Colour notes: Quantum, Compilers, Just Neat