Research
Ilya Marchetti
Senior Research Scientist, Error Correction
he/him · at Ruqi since 2020
“Everyone wants a perfect qubit. I want a decoder that knows what to do when the perfect qubit has a bad Tuesday.”
Ilya works on the boundary between theory and the control rack: quantum low-density parity-check codes, real-time decoding, and the error budgets that determine whether a machine can do anything useful. He designed the decoder scheduling used in the lab's surface-code experiments.
He was born in Trieste, where his father was a ship's electrician and his mother taught mathematics. He came to quantum computing through classical information theory and still believes the cleanest ideas are the ones you can explain with a whiteboard, two colors of marker, and an apology for the coffee stains.
At Ruqi, Ilya leads the error-correction group and is the lab's most reliable skeptic. If a result sounds too good, he will ask for the noise model. If the noise model is good, he will ask who calibrated it.
Working on
Quantum LDPC codes · Real-time decoding · Error budgeting
Off the clock
Builds steel-frame bicycles in a shared workshop and maintains an increasingly complicated espresso spreadsheet.
Ask me about
decoders, LDPC codes, classical control, espresso.
Questions in the drawer
- Which code families survive the messy, correlated noise of a real superconducting processor?
- How much classical compute belongs inside the cryostat, and how much should stay outside?
- Can decoders be simple enough for another lab to reproduce without our help?
Selected work
2026
2025
2024
2026
Open to collaborations
Work with Ilya
Good questions make better neighbours.
We answer email from students, journalists, public servants, and anyone who is trying to understand what quantum technology can actually do.