Meet Our Team

Meet our team leader

Paweł Caputa

Pawel Caputa is a faculty member at the Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm University. Since 2024, he has also been a Visiting Associate Professor at the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, and an Affiliate Professor at the Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Warsaw, Poland.

His research spans integrability, 1/N corrections, and tests of the AdS/CFT correspondence. More recently, his interests have focused on entanglement dynamics and quantum complexity in quantum field theories, the emergence of geometry from quantum information, quantum gravity, and the AdS/CFT correspondence.

In Stockholm, he leads the Quantum Information in Quantum Gravity group, supported by the ERC Consolidator Grant “QComplexity.” Outside of physics, he enjoys hiking, running, and spending time in Kyoto.

Meet our team of international researchers with various scientific backgrounds. Our interests span from quantum information in quantum field theories, computational complexity and AdS/CFT correspondence to running, high jumping and break dance.

Post-Doc

Giuseppe
Di Giulio

Theoretical physicist working at the interface between Quantum Information Theory, Quantum Matter, and Quantum Gravity. I obtained Ph.D. in Statistical Physics in 2021 at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste. Then, I moved to the Julius-Maximilians University of Würzburg for my first postdoctoral stage at the Chair of Theoretical Physics III. In October 2024, I joined Stockholm University.

My research lies at the intersection of quantum information, condensed matter, and high-energy physics, exploiting the synergies among these fields to advance our understanding of entanglement, many-body physics, and quantum gravity. I am interested in how quantum information and quantum correlations are encoded in quantum systems and how they influence their physical behaviors.

In addition to techniques borrowed from quantum many-body physics, I often take inspiration from questions arising in the context of quantum gravity, studied through the lens of the AdS/CFT correspondence. The recently drawn insightful connections between holography and quantum information bridge the distinct areas of my research interests. I am intrigued by what we can learn about quantum gravity through many-body systems or whether holography can suggest insights into quantum matter.

Post-Doc

Evita Verheijden

I am a theoretical physicist working on quantum gravity, quantum information, and cryptography. I obtained my PhD in 2022 at the University of Amsterdam, and subsequently was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and MIT's Black Hole initiative. I joined Stockholm University in September 2025.

My research focuses on the interplay between horizons and singularities, both of black holes and the expanding universe. I've recently been interested in the problem of cosmic censorship --- the conjecture that singularities should be hidden behind horizons --- and have borrowed tools from computer science and cryptography to prove a generic condition for event horizon formation in quantum gravity. My other main interest is the dynamics of near-extremal black holes, and the effective (lower-dimensional) theory that describes their near-horizon physics. Many aspects of these black holes are universal, but to construct a microscopic description we need to also understand their non-universal aspects.

Finally, I am fascinated by the dynamics of our expanding universe and the cosmological horizon that surrounds us, and am always searching for opportunities to borrow lessons learned from studying black hole horizons to the cosmological horizon.

Graduate fellow

Loc Tran Quang

My research interests include topics in quantum gravity, particularly Krylov complexity and the application of bootstrap techniques across various contexts such as random matrix theory and scattering amplitudes. I am open to collaboration and welcome opportunities to connect.

Graduate fellow

Pedro Castellini Grand

I am an Argentine physicist from Luján, Buenos Aires. I’ve always been a curious person, interested in finding out how complex processes around me worked. A pivotal moment came in 2012, at the start of high school, when CERN announced the discovery of the Higgs Boson. That historic event solidified my path. Six years later I began my undergraduate studies in Physics at Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA), and after three years, moved to Bariloche, in Patagonia, to complete my degree at Instituto Balseiro. I completed my undergraduate studies with a thesis regarding the Euclidean Approach to Bekenstein-Hawking entropy while beginning introductory courses on both Particle Physics and QFT at the “Particles and Fields Group”.

In December 2024, I completed my Master’s degree with a thesis on constructing and counting microstates for black holes with hyperbolic event horizons. Toward the end of this project, we explored more general constructions of microstates using random quantum circuits. 

My research interests span Quantum Field Theory and Quantum Gravity, with a particular focus on their intersection with quantum information, especially in the context of holography and black hole physics. I’m also intrigued by the algebraic approach to QFT and non-perturbative aspects of field theory. Beyond these core areas, I find the application of quantum mechanics to complex and biological systems compelling.

Outside of research, I enjoy trekking and other outdoor activities, as well as reading literature and non-fiction.

Graduate fellow

Brian Creed

 For my undergraduate thesis I worked with the Quantum Thermodynamics and Information Theory group on Time Crystals in Open Quantum Systems. After this, I completed a one year MSc degree in Trinity College Dublin on Quantum Fields, Strings, and Gravity. My thesis was on Krylov Complexity and Integrable to Chaotic Transitions in N=4 Super Yang-Mills, a work that I'm still continuing here at Stockholm.

Krylov Complexity and its dependence on the initial condition has already proven a useful tool in more simple studies of holography such as the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model and two dimensional conformal field theories. However, when applied to quantum field theories in general the construction suffers a few issues. My hope is to improve or circumvent these issues to study Krylov Complexity in the prototypical model of holography, N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. This model is known to have both an integrable and a chaotic regime, therefore makes a perfect testing ground for understanding the holographic implications of both dynamics on Krylov Complexity. Ultimately, we hope to learn more about state corresponding to different types of black holes from the holographic gauge theory.

Beyond holography, I am interested Quantum Thermodynamics and Information Theory in closed and open quantum many-body systems. In particular, I am interested in a range of different Eigenstate Thermalisation Hypothesis violating and ergodicity breaking phenomena, such as quantum scars and time crystals. As these are special states in a theory, one must use more dynamical measures to probe their behaviour. Understanding these features of quantum systems can help us better map out the spectrum of dynamics from quantum integrable to chaotic. The region between the two has been illusive and one hopes that a "Quantum KAM" theory could be established to describe it.