Rate My Professor Jamie Vicary

Jamie Vicary is Professor of Future Computation in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge, where he joined as faculty in 2020. He holds a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and is a Fellow of King's College. Prior to Cambridge, Vicary was a faculty member in the Theoretical Computer Science research group at the University of Birmingham, a postdoctoral researcher in the Quantum Group at the University of Oxford, and at the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore. He completed his PhD in Physics at Imperial College London in 2009 under the supervision of Professor Chris Isham, focusing on the mathematical foundations of quantum computation. This followed the Part III Mathematics course at the University of Cambridge specializing in quantum physics and a first degree in Physics at Mansfield College, Oxford.

Vicary's research employs category theory as an abstract language for interacting information-processing systems, developing new logical and structural techniques to advance computation in quantum and classical domains. His work spans geometrical higher category theory, including semistrict theories and string diagrams via the homotopy.io proof assistant; type theory for higher categories; quantum combinatorics; dynamics of quantum systems; and topological quantum field theory. He contributes to the Cambridge Logical Structures Hub research group and has received the Birkhoff–von Neumann Prize in 2022 for research on quantum foundations. Key publications include 'Computads for weak ∞-categories as an inductive type' with Christopher Dean, Eric Finster, Ioannis Markakis, and David Reutter (Advances in Mathematics, 2022); 'Zigzag normalisation for associative n-categories' with Lukas Heidemann and David Reutter (Proceedings of LICS 2022); 'The word problem for braided monoidal categories is unknot-hard' with Antonin Delpeuch (Proceedings of ACT 2021); 'Higher Quantum Theory' (2012); and 'Categorical formulation of quantum algebras' (2011). Vicary has delivered invited lectures worldwide, including at LOOPS '23, Midlands Graduate School, and various quantum and category theory seminars.