December 2025
LIDS graduate student Maison Clouâtré has been recognized with the inaugural Outstanding Student Paper Award from the IEEE Quantum Computing, Systems, and Control (QCSC) technical committee. The award, to be given annually by the QCSC technical committee, aims to recognize outstanding contributions of students working in the areas of quantum computing, systems, and control.
Clouâtré’s paper—coauthored with LIDS researchers Stefano Marano, Peter L. Falb, and Moe Z. Win—is titled “Admissible optimal control for parameter estimation in quantum systems”. The paper is published in IEEE Control Systems Letters and was presented at the 2024 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) in Milano, Italy.
The paper lays a mathematical foundation for quantum parameter estimation via control, detailing how optimal control can be used to maximize the Fisher information extracted from a quantum experiment. Ordinarily, Fisher information-maximizing control laws are parameter dependent, but the implementation of parameter dependent control laws would defeat the purpose of parameter estimation. Motivated by this observation, the paper introduces the concept of “admissible controls” which are universally optimal controls that maximize the Fisher information independently of the parameter to be estimated. The paper derives necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of admissible controls.
Clouâtré is a third-year graduate student in LIDS and is advised by Moe Z. Win (LIDS, AA, SCC). His research interests lie at the intersection of control theory and statistical inference, with a focus on developing optimal control algorithms for quantum sensing and detection. Clouâtré is a 2025 MathWorks Fellow and a 2022 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellow.
The IEEE QCSC technical committee is part of the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS). The committee aims to build a community of experts in quantum computing, systems, and control, who are scholars in academic organizations and industrial companies. The Outstanding Student Paper Award will be recognized in the December 2025 issue of IEEE Control Systems.