Gayane Vardoyan

Email: gvardoyan-at-cs-umass-edu

About Me

I am an Assistant Professor at the College of Information and Computer Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

From 2022 to 2024, I was an Assistant Professor at QuTech's Quantum Internet Division, and EEMCS, TU Delft, receiving a permanent contract in 2023. The same year, I became faculty part-time at UMass Amherst, switching to full-time in 2024. Previously, I was a postdoc researcher at TU Delft, where I worked with Prof. Stephanie Wehner. I received my PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where I worked in systems and networking. My advisor was Prof. Don Towsley. My research interests focus on the modelling and performance analysis of distributed quantum systems. I received my Master of Science in 2017 from UMass Amherst. I interned at Inria in Sophia Antipolis, France in Summer 2017. I received my Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California at Berkeley. Between my undergraduate and graduate education, I worked at the Argonne National Lab and the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago.

Recruiting

I am currently looking for driven PhD students wishing to conduct research in the area of quantum communication. Interested candidates may apply either through my personal portal here or through the graduate school here.

As the idea of a Quantum Internet draws nearer to reality, protocols must be developed to enable users to reap as many of the potential benefits of this new technology as possible. A fundamental challenge in quantum networking is long-distance entanglement distribution — to actualize such a task with near-term quantum devices of limited functionality, special care is needed to ensure that quantum-equipped users have entanglement of sufficiently high quality at their disposal.


One focus of my group is thus to develop efficient entanglement distribution algorithms, often inspired both by analytical models of quantum network architectures, as well as techniques found in classical networking literature. In general, the group is interested in addressing the many challenges pertaining to distributed quantum systems, as well as seeking new quantum-enabled possibilities and applications.

Piecemaker: a resource-efficient entanglement distribution protocol
Luise Prielinger, Kenneth Goodenough, Guus Avis, Stefan Krastanov, Don Towsley, Gayane Vardoyan
arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.14737 link

Surrogate-guided optimization in quantum networks
Luise Prielinger, Álvaro G Iñesta, Gayane Vardoyan
npj Quantum Information, 2025 link

Leveraging internet principles to build a quantum network
Leonardo Bacciottini, Matheus Guedes De Andrade, Shahrooz Pouryousef, Emily Van Milligen,
Aparimit Chandra, Nitish Panigrahy, Nageswara SV Rao, Gayane Vardoyan, Don Towsley
IEEE Network, 2025 link

Testbed and Experiments for Quantum-Conventional Networking
Nageswara Rao, Muneer Alshowkan, Joseph Chapman, Hsuan-Hao Lu, Nicholas Peters, Joseph Lukens,
Guoliang Xue, Saikat Guha, Emily Van Milligen, Don Towsley, Gayane Vardoyan, Leonardo Bacciottini, Linran Fan International Conference on Quantum Communications, Networking, and Computing (QCNC), 2025 link

Service-the-Longest-Queue Among d Choices Policy for Quantum Entanglement Switching
Guo Xian Yau, Thirupathaiah Vasantam, Gayane Vardoyan
International Conference on Quantum Communications, Networking, and Computing (QCNC), 2025 link

Entanglement routing over networks with time multiplexed repeaters
Emily Van Milligen, Eliana Jacobson, Ashlesha Patil, Gayane Vardoyan, Don Towsley, Saikat Guha
IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering, 2025

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS)-Assisted Entanglement Distribution in FSO Quantum Networks
Mahdi Chehimi, Mohamed Elhattab, Walid Saad, Gayane Vardoyan, Nitish K Panigrahy, Chadi Assi, Don Towsley
IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 2025 link

An on-demand resource allocation algorithm for a quantum network hub and its performance analysis
Scarlett Gauthier, Thirupathaiah Vasantam, Gayane Vardoyan
IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering, 2024 link

On the Analysis of Quantum Repeater Chains with Sequential Swaps
Matheus Guedes de Andrade, Emily A Van Milligen, Leonardo Bacciottini, Aparimit Chandra, Shahrooz Pouryousef, Nitish K Panigrahy, Gayane Vardoyan, Don Towsley
arXiv preprint arXiv: 2405.18252

On the Bipartite Entanglement Capacity of Quantum Networks
Gayane Vardoyan, Emily van Milligen, Saikat Guha, Stephanie Wehner, Don Towsley
IEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering, 2024 link

Tools for the analysis of quantum protocols requiring state generation within a time window
Bethany Davies, Thomas Beauchamp, Gayane Vardoyan, Stephanie Wehner
IEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering, 2024 link

Mapping quantum circuits to modular architectures with QUBO
Medina Bandic, Luise Prielinger, Jonas Nüßlein, Anabel Ovide, Santiago Rodrigo, Sergi Abadal, Hans van Someren, Gayane Vardoyan, Eduard Alarcon, Carmen G Almudever, Sebastian Feld
IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering, 2023 link

Quantum Network Utility Maximization
Gayane Vardoyan, Stephanie Wehner
IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering, 2023 link

Optimistic Entanglement Purification in Quantum Networks
Mohammad Mobayenjarihani, Gayane Vardoyan, Don Towsley
IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering, 2023

A Control Architecture for Entanglement Generation Switches in Quantum Networks
Scarlett Gauthier, Gayane Vardoyan, Stephanie Wehner
SIGCOMM Workshop on Quantum Networks and Distributed Quantum Computing (QuNet 2023)

Optimal entanglement distribution policies in homogeneous repeater chains with cutoffs
Álvaro. G. Iñesta, Gayane Vardoyan, Lara Scavuzzo, Stephanie Wehner
npj Quantum Information, 2023 link

On the Quantum Performance Evaluation of Two Distributed Quantum Architectures
Gayane Vardoyan, Matt Skrzypczyk, Stephanie Wehner
Performance 2021 (regular paper); journal version in Performance Evaluation (PEVA)
pdf
Best Paper Award

On the Stochastic Analysis of a Quantum Entanglement Distribution Switch
Gayane Vardoyan, Saikat Guha, Philippe Nain, Don Towsley
IEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering, 2021
pdf

Analysis of a Tripartite Entanglement Distribution Switch
Philippe Nain, Gayane Vardoyan, Saikat Guha, Don Towsley
Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications (QUESTA), 2021
pdf

On the Exact Analysis of an Idealized Quantum Switch
Gayane Vardoyan, Philippe Nain, Saikat Guha, Don Towsley
Performance 2020 (regular paper); journal version in PEVA
pdf

On the Analysis of a Multipartite Entanglement Distribution Switch
Philippe Nain, Gayane Vardoyan, Saikat Guha, Don Towsley
SIGMETRICS 2020/Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems (POMACS)
pdf

On the Capacity Region of Bipartite and Tripartite Entanglement Switching
Gayane Vardoyan, Saikat Guha, Philippe Nain, Don Towsley
Performance 2020 (short paper), journal version to appear in ACM ToMPECS
Extended abstract accepted as an oral presentation in QCrypt 2019
pdf

On the Stochastic Analysis of a Quantum Entanglement Switch (Workshop version)
Gayane Vardoyan, Saikat Guha, Philippe Nain, Don Towsley
Workshop on MAthematical performance Modeling and Analysis (MAMA 2019)
pdf

The Role of Network Topology for Distributed Machine Learning
Giovanni Neglia, Gianmarco Calbi, Gayane Vardoyan, Don Towsley
IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM 2019)
pdf

Towards Stability Analysis of Data Transport Mechanisms: a Fluid Model and Its Applications
Gayane Vardoyan, C.V. Hollot, Don Towsley
IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM 2018)
IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 2021 (journal version with another application to HTCP)
pdf of INFOCOM paper
extended version of INFOCOM paper with proofs
slides pptx slides pdf
Best-In-Session Presentation Award
pdf of journal version, with HTCP

Experiments and Analyses of Data Transfers over Wide-Area Dedicated Connections
N. S. V. Rao, Q. Liu, S. Sen, J. Hanley, I. Foster, R. Kettimuthu, C. Q. Wu, D. Yun, G. Vardoyan, D. Towsley
26th International Conference on Computer Communication and Networks (ICCCN 2017)
link

TCP Throughput Profiles Using Measurements Over Dedicated Connections
Nageswara Rao, Qiang Liu, Satyabrata Sen, Don Towsley, Gayane Vardoyan, Raj Kettimuthu, Ian Foster
Proceedings of the 26th International Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing (HPDC 2017)
pdf

Models of TCP in High-BDP Environments and Their Experimental Validation
Gayane Vardoyan, Nageswara Rao, Don Towsley
24th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP 2016)
pdf

High-Performance Data Flows Using Analytical Models and Measurements
Nageswara Rao, Rajkumar Kettimuthu, Ian Foster, Don Towsley, Gayane Vardoyan, Brad Settlemyer and Qiang Liu
Workshop on Modeling & Simulation of Systems and Applications (ModSim 2016)

Sustained Wide-Area TCP Memory Transfers over Dedicated Connections
Nageswara Rao, Don Towsley, Gayane Vardoyan, Bradley Settlemyer, Ian Foster, Rajkumar Kettimuthu
High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC), 2015
pdf

An Elegant Sufficiency: Load-Aware Differentiated Scheduling of Data Transfers
Rajkumar Kettimuthu, Gayane Vardoyan, Gagan Agrawal, P. Sadayappan, and Ian Foster
SC '15 Proceedings of the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis pdf

Modeling and Optimizing Large-Scale Wide-Area Data Transfers
Rajkumar Kettimuthu, Gayane Vardoyan, Gagan Agrawal, and P. Sadayappan
14th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing, 2014
pdf

Characterizing Throughput Bottlenecks for Secure GridFTP Transfers
Gayane Vardoyan, Rajkumar Kettimuthu, Michael Link, Steven Tuecke
International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications, 2013
pdf

Postdoc (Current)

Leonardo Bacciottini

PhD (Current)

Luise Prielinger

Eric Yau

Meghashrita Das

Master (Past)

Héctor Calero Mas

Undergraduate (Past)

Boris Goranov
Aksel Tacettin
Tianchen Qu
Ioana-Lisandra Drăgănescu
Ionut Ciobanu

Quantum Communication (COMPSCI 590QC/690QC)

I developed this course in 2024/2025 and first taught it in the Spring 2025 semester at UMass CICS.
Please feel free to use these resources and adapt them to your courses.
My only request is that you notify me of any discovered mistakes!

Weeks 1/2: Basics fo Quantum Theory
Lecture 1 Lecture 2 Lectures 3/4

Week 3: From Pure to Mixed States
Lectures 5/6

Weeks 4/5: Entanglement
Lectures 7/8/9/10

Week 6: Entanglement Generation
Lectures 11/12

Week 7: First Applications
Lectures 13/14

Week 8: Quantum Key Distribution
Lectures 15/16

Week 9: Long-distance Quantum Communication
Lectures 17/18

Week 10: Coping with Noise
Lectures 19/20

Week 11: Basic Quantum Error Correction
Lectures 21/22

Week 12: More applications
Lectures 23/24

Oct 2024 I gave invited talks at the Cornell ECE FIND Seminar, a quantum networks workshop organized by the Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation; and a Physics Colloquium at the University of Tenessee Knoxville.

Jun 2024 I gave an invited talk at a quantum summer school at University College London.

May 2024 I co-organized the 11th Quantum Software Consortium General Assembly.

Feb 2024 I have joined the editorial team at npj Quantum Information as an Associate Editor.

Jul 2023 I joined the Technical Program Committee of SIGMETRICS/Performance 2024.

Apr 2023 I gave an invited talk on quantum network utility maximization at the Dutch National Mathematical Congress in Utrecht.

Mar 2022 I gave an invited talk, "On the Performance Evaluation of Two Distributed Quantum Architectures", at the APS March Meeting in Chicago.

Nov 2021 Our Performance 2021 paper received the best paper award!

July 2020 Two papers (one short, one regular) accepted to Performance 2020

03/31/20 Our paper on n-partite entanglement switching has been accepted to SIGMETRICS 2020

Jan 2020 Our short course proposal for the Brazilian Symposium on Computer Networks and Distributed Systems (SBRC) has been accepted! We will teach a short course on quantum communications and related topics in Rio de Janeiro in May.

Spring 2020 I am co-organizing a seminar on Topics in Distributed Quantum Information Systems with Don Towsley.

1/9/20-1/10/20 I gave a talk at TU Delft during my visit with Prof. Stephanie Wehner's group.

6/19/19 I am very excited about attending Rising Stars 2019 October 29-November 1 at UIUC!

9/5/19 I gave a talk at UConn, CSE Colloquium, hosted by Prof. Bing Wang, on Sept. 5.

3/26/19 I gave a talk at CS Theory Seminar, led by Arya Mazumdar, at UMass Amherst.