Isaac Holt

Computer Science PhD Student at the University of Cambridge

Colchester, England, United Kingdom

About

Computer Science PhD student at Jesus College, Cambridge. Particular interests in quantum computation and quantum algorithms. Author and maintainer of a popular mathematical Rust library, bnum. Co-author of a mathematical paper which is a chapter in the book The Computer Algebra System OSCAR, part of Springer's Algorithms and Computation in Mathematics series. I am a high achieving student, with a distinction in Part III Mathematics at Cambridge, and the joint-highest First in my mathematics cohort at Durham University.

Experience

  • Teaching Assistant at University of Cambridge
    Jan 2026 - Present · 7 mos

    Conducting undergraduate supervisions for the third year Quantum Computing course.

  • Research Intern at The University of British Columbia
    Jun 2024 - Sep 2024 · 4 mos

    11-week research internship supervised by Professor Christoph Ortner. Worked on reconstruction of intersecting atomic potential multi-surfaces, including devising and implementing an improved method in Python.

  • Grey College Web and Communications Internship at Grey College, Durham University
    Jul 2023 - Aug 2023 · 2 mos

    In the internship, I developed a new website for the Grey College Senior Common Room, using Next.js, Bootstrap, SMTP2GO and Cloudflare KV storage. This involved building an admin dashboard with two email clients: one for sending markdown emails, another for sending emails with a newsletter template with file attachments. It also included a password-less email authentication system.

  • Research Project in Tropical Geometry at Durham University Department of Mathematical Sciences
    Jun 2023 - Jul 2023 · 2 mos

    I took part in a mathematical research project, under the supervision of Dr Yue Ren, a member of the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Durham. The area of research was tropical geometry - specifically, how the tropical modification of certain polynomial systems can be used to determine the number of solutions to the system. This culminated in a generalisation of a theorem from another paper, which relates to the generic root count of a specific family of polynomial systems. The paper we wrote has been published in a book in Springer's Algorithms and Computation in Mathematics series. I also attended a working group in Germany relating to this work, in order to write some code for the OSCAR computer algebra system. I gave a presentation at the Tomorrow's Mathematicians Today 2024 conference on this project.

  • Student Digital Leader at Durham University
    Sep 2022 - Jun 2023 · 10 mos

    For the first few weeks, I worked in online support with the university's digital services for the new students. I then worked as a UAT (User Acceptance Testing) Analyst within this role, using Azure DevOps and Jira to pass/fail test cases and report bugs.