About
I have started to be interested in quantum mechanics in the early days of my bachelor's degree, where I studied both physics and computer science. I continued in a master of physics, and after two internships in LIP6 and one in Atos I found out that I wanted to pursue in the foundations of quantum mechanics, contextuality being the perfect candidate. But my interests are not limited to science, I like to do the guitar on my free time and I have multiple programming projects at the same time.

PhD student in quantum foundations
I am now in my PhD since October 2022 in the Quantum Information team of LIP6, in Paris. Under the supervision of Damian Markham and Marco Túlio Quintino I am working on the foundations of quantum mechanics and on all aspects of contextuality, a weird feature that may define partly quantum mechanics.
- Degree: Master (PhD in preparation)
- Email: kim.vallee (at) lip6.fr
- Lab: LIP6 - CNRS - Sorbonne Université
During my PhD I had the opportunity to teach for two consecutive years in bachelor's and master's degree level. I also developed an educational board game on quantum mechanics called Qats, which will soon be edited and hopefully popularized in france. I'm also the co-founder of SoQET, a student association for students in the field of quantum technologies.
Some numbers
Find below some useful, and some less informative numbers about me.
Publications Fetched from google scholar
Years as a researcher
Collaborators across papers
Blog posts on projects and research
Skills
Linguistic skills
- English — bilingual
- French — native
- Japanese — notions
- German — notions
Practical skills
- Programming — Python, C, LaTeX, Julia
- Mathematical optimization — Linear Programming, Semi-Definite Programming
- Machine & deep learning — Theory, Applications
- Office suite — Word, excel
- Figma — Average usage
Resume
You can find in details my curriculum below, from high school to my current position, each part given with some explanatory text.
Summary
Kim Vallée
I'm a PhD student working in the field of quantum foundations, starting from both computer science and physics, I have evolved in a very diverse environment.
- Website : kimvallee.fr
- Mail : kim.vallee (at) lip6.fr
School curriculum (5)
PhD in Quantum Foundations
10/2022 - Now
Location: Paris, France
3 years and 6 months PhD on quantum foundations, particularly focused on contextuality. Participation in conferences (see the tab on the right). For a more complete description, look at the employments, teachings and conferences tabs. More can be found about my interests in the research interest section and in the papers section.
Master of Physics
09/2020 - 07/2022
Location: Palaiseau, France
À la carte classes, comprising both physics (quantum theory, quantum information, lasers and masers, condensed matter theory) and computer science (deep learning, machine learning, mathematical optimization). For these two years I was awarded a scholarship of excellence. I also did an internship in condensed matter theory in the master years.
Physics & CS Bachelor (3rd year)
09/2019 - 05/2020
Location: Paris, France
Third year of Bachelor degree in double major Physics and Computer Science. Unique student of the studies, which were created for me. Highest honours on the degree.
Physics Bachelor (1st & 2nd year)
09/2017 - 05/2019
Location: Lille, France
Bachelor degree in Physics, with more than 50% of classes in English. This was done at the same time as my Bachelor degree in computer science. Highest honours & top 5 of the school year each year.
Computer Science Bachelor (1st & 2nd year)
09/2017 - 05/2019
Location: Lille, France
Bachelor degree in Computer Science, with more than 50% of classes in English. This was done at the same time as my Bachelor degree in Physics. Highest honours & top 1 of the school year each year.
Employments (7)
PhD - Contextuality
October 2022 - Now
Contextuality, LP & SDP, noisy inequalities
My PhD is focused on contextuality, its definition, its potential usefulness, and potentially how to measure it with noise or imperfect experimental setup. More can be found in the publications part and in the curriculum part. During my PhD I am also teaching in programming (C mostly) and in Master 2 (Quantum information). Under the supervision of Damian Markham and Marco Túlio Quintino.
LIP6 - Contextuality
January - July 2022
Contextuality, frameworks, literature review
This 6 months internship served as a basis for my PhD, with an extensive introduction to contextuality and a long literature review, this allowed me to start my PhD with strong knowledge (yet incomplete) of contextuality. I skimmed through a lot of frameworks in order to get used to them. Under the supervision of Dr. Damian Markham.
ATOS - Quantum simulation
June - September 2021
Quantum simulation, condensed matter, myQLM
Study of condensed matter systems, quasi periodic potential, and computation of interesting quantities such as the superfluid fraction and the inverse participation ratio on a quantum computer, aiming at NISQ devices. Under the supervision of Dr. Thomas Ayral.
CPHT - Fractality condensed matter
September 2020 - Septembre 2021
Condensed matter, fractality, Aubry-André
This one year internship, which was focused on condensed matter, was made in parallel to my Master degree. I was focusing on the appearance of fractality in condensed matter systems, such as the Aubry-André model and its consequences on energy levels or material properties.
LIP6 - Photononics
June - August 2020
Optics, quantum computing
This internship unfortunately fell in the middle of the COVID pandemic, but I had the occasion to talk with LIP6 members and learn about photonic quantum computing. One the aim was to be able to implement better CNOT gates in a photonic circuit. Under the supervision of Dr. Frédéric Grosshans & Dr. Andrea Olivo.
Private teacher
September 2019 - April 2020
Teaching, computer science, physics
During my Bachelor's degree year I took some of my time to teach students ranging from computer science to physics, I helped a lot of students to get their diploma. It was also a nice experience to learn how to teach which helped me a lot with my current activities.
IEMN - Statistical Physics
June 2019 - July 2019
Statistical physics, Fortran, 1D chain
I discovered the field of statistical physics, using FORTRAN to make efficient simulations, in the aim of measuring the ballistic effect of temperature. It was only a discovery internship but it was nonetheless very interesting under the supervision or Dr. Pier Luca Palla.
Teachings (4)
Quantum Information
2022 - Now
6.0 h / year - Master 2
In this course I handled 3 tutorials on contextuality, writing the exercise sheets and corrections. It served as an introduction to Kochen Specker contextuality, under the Sheaf-Theoretic framework approach. I also made exercises on non-locality.
Programming elements 2
2022 - Now
38.5 h / year - Licence 1
The course focuses on teaching the basics of C to students. It is a good introduction to types and structures in C with two practical exams. I am a practical session teacher.
OOP introduction
2023 - Now
19.5 h / year - Licence 2
This course teaches the basics of Object-Oriented Programming in Java. The students had to learn about all the concepts around classes in Java. As a teacher I was helping in class and I prepared midterm exams on computer.
Data structure
2022 - 2023
17.5 h / year - Licence 2
This course in C is an advanced course for computer scientist where they have to do a mini-project in C. The year I was teaching students had to program a mini-git in C, where they could add, commit and checkout branches.
Conferences (4)
Solstice of foundations
June 20, 2022 - June 24, 2022
Summer school - In person - ETH, Zürich, Swizerland
Picturing Quantum Weirdness
July 2, 2023 - July 16, 2023
Summer school - Online - ICTQT, Gdansk, Poland
Online following of the summer school on ZX calculus and diagrammatic representation of quantum mechanics.
QPL
July 17, 2023 - July 21, 2023
Conference - In person - IHP, Paris, France
Poster presentation of my paper Corrected Bell and Noncontextuality Inequalities for Realistic Experiments .
FoQaCiA
April 29, 2024 - May 3, 2024
Conference - In person - Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Canada
Presented a gong show talk of 5min about the current status of my research.
Blog
Interested in my side projects ? This is the place to look. Ranging from board games to music, I will put in my blog my various ongoing activities and projects.
- All
- QATS (1)

Research interests
As a researcher, I have many research interests, ranging from quantum foundations to education.
Sheaf Theoretic contextuality
The sheaf theoretic framework for contextuality was popularized in a seminal work of Abramsky and Brandenburger in 2011. I like all projects related to extending this theory, and to relate it to quantum theory.
Operational theory
This other framework for contextuality was developed by Spekkens in 2005. This different approach to contextuality is more operational and I believe that the interactions between this framework and the Sheaf theoretic framework can be explored more in depth.
Classical models and relaxations
Whether it is in the Sheaf Theoretic framework, in the operational framework or any other representation of classical physics, I like to relax the assumptions that come with these frameworks and see how these relaxations interact with quantum theory. This is particularly interesting to understand the "properties" that make quantum contextual.
Contextuality and computation
More and more, people are interested in applications of quantum mechanics to computational advantage. Quantum computation, in its various forms, has been a huge subject of interest, but we still don't know what really makes quantum advantage. It's been pointed out in recent works that it might be related to contextuality, and I think this path should be explored more in depth.
Reconstruction of quantum theory
I do believe that the actual formulation of quantum mechanics based on mathematics is not the right way to go. We should find physical principals that describe quantum mechanics, then applications would become natural. It's not an active subject of my research but rather an interest I have.
Papers
Here is a collection of my papers, fetched from Google Scholar, with the abstract summary
Contact
If you want to contact me, don't hesitate to email me.
Location:
LIP6, 4 place Jussieu, 75005 Paris
Email:
kim.vallee (at) lip6.fr