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Zacharie Van Herstraeten

Zacharie Van Herstraeten

Quantum information & optics researcher

45 rue d'Ulm, Paris, Île-de-France, FR, 75005
French, English

Background


About

About

Seeking photons in their most genuinely quantum regimes, tracking their Wigner functions across quantum phase space, and observing them through the lens of information theory.

Work Experience

Work Experience

  • Postdoctoral ResearcherInria — École Normale Supérieure (ENS)

    Feb, 2024 - Present

    Postdoctoral research in the QAT team with Dr. Ulysse Chabaud, employing phase-space methods to identify and characterize quantum resources.

    • Operational characterization of Wigner-positive states

    • Extending majorization theory to quasiprobabilities

  • Postdoctoral ResearcherCollege of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona

    Jan, 2022 - Jan, 20242 years

    Postdoctoral research in the Quantum Photonic Applications Group of Prof. Saikat Guha, focusing on quantum communication with continuous-variable systems.

    • Capacity of non-Gaussian bosonic channels

    • Entanglement enhancement via photon subtraction

Skills

Skills

  • Quantum optics

    Continuous variables

    Phase-space methods

    Quasiprobabilities

  • Quantum information theory

    Resource theories

    Bosonic channels

    Entropic inequalities

  • Mathematical methods

    Theory of majorization

    Functional analysis

    Convex analysis

  • Scientific computing

    Python

    Matplotlib

    Mathematica

Education

Education

  • Doctoral research conducted at the Center for Quantum Information and Communication (QuIC), under the supervision of Prof. Nicolas J. Cerf. PhD thesis: Majorization theoretical approach to quantum uncertainty — From Wigner entropy to Gaussian bosonic channels., PhD in Quantum Information, École polytechnique de Bruxelles, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB)

    Sep, 2017 - Dec, 2021

  • Specialized in Quantum applications and Photonics., MSc in Physics Engineering, École polytechnique de Bruxelles, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB)

    Sep, 2015 - Sep, 2017

  • First year of the master’s degree completed as part of the Erasmus program., International exchange, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

    Sep, 2015 - Sep, 2016

Awards

Awards

  • BAEF Postdoctoral Fellowship , Belgian American Educational Foundation (BAEF)

    Awarded on: Jan 29, 2021

    One-year postdoctoral fellowship awarded to support Belgian scholars conducting research in the United States.

  • F.R.S.-FNRS Doctoral Fellowship (FRIA) , Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS), Belgium

    Awarded on: Dec 15, 2017

    Competitive four-year doctoral fellowship supporting PhD training in the exact and natural sciences.

Volunteer Work

Volunteer Work

  • Co-organizer, QuiDiQua 3 — Quasiprobability Distributions in Quantum Mechanics, Optics and Information

    Jun, 2025 - Nov, 2025

    Member of the organizing committee of the international conference QuiDiQua 3 (Paris, 2025), focusing on quasiprobability distributions and phase-space methods.

  • Package maintainer, qopy — Quantum Optics in Python

    May, 2025 - Present

    Developer and maintainer of an open-source Python toolkit for Wigner functions, bosonic channels, and visualization in quantum optics.

  • Teaching assistant, École polytechnique de Bruxelles, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB)

    Sep, 2017 - Dec, 2021

    Taught exercise sessions and lectures in the quantum mechanics course for third-year engineering students. Supervised the master's theses of two students.

  • Reviewer, Peer-reviewed scientific journals

    Jan, 2024 - Present

    Reviewer for various journals in quantum information and quantum physics.

    • Quantum

    • Physical Review A

    • Quantum Information Processing