Alumni Spotlight: Ryan Levy

A former Flatiron Institute research fellow, Levy now explores how fault-tolerant quantum computers can advance basic research.

Ryan Levy with a group of colleagues in the Cleanlab. — Ryan Levy (third from left) in the PsiQuantum Cleanlab. PsiQuantum

Ryan Levy worked at the Center for Computational Quantum Physics (CCQ) at the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute as a research fellow from September 2022 to June 2025. Levy received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2022, where his work spanned quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) methods, tensor networks and, more recently, quantum computing.

We recently caught up with Levy to ask him what he’s been up to as he’s continued his career.

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What are you doing now?
I am the applications lead for Fundamental Research at PsiQuantum, where I help develop and guide applications for quantum computing, with a strong focus on lattice models in condensed matter such as the Hubbard model. I get to work both internally, at the intersection of algorithms, business and methodology teams, as well as with external partners (academia, labs, etc.) to explore how fault-tolerant quantum computers can advance basic research.

What is one thing that you’ve taken away from your time at the Simons Foundation that helps you in your current role?
Being exposed to very diverse scientific audiences, both within CCQ and across the foundation more broadly. It’s sometimes hard to see the scale that state-of-the-art science can achieve outside of your immediate domain, and the variety of speakers the foundation would regularly host really helped showcase this.

What is the coolest adventure you’ve been on since you left?
For my wife’s birthday, we decided to explore Long Island for a long weekend: hanging out with rescue cows and goats at a farm (we fed them animal crackers, hah!), getting fresh pie at Briermere Farms, a North Fork winery crawl, going to Robert Moses and Cedar Beach, and watching lots of ducks on the water.

What’s your favorite non-work memory of the foundation?
Helping the public with the solar viewings at Madison Square Park and the “In the Path of Totality” effort! Then, as a bonus, through the Postcrossing project, I was also able to send some “In The Path of Totality” postcards to recipients around the world, which I found brought lots of joy and interesting stories of what a previous or upcoming eclipse meant to them.