astronomy

Mark Wilde

Mark Wilde is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Mark Wilde rather than just read about it. In short: Mark McMahon Wilde is an American quantum information scientist. He is a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University, and he is also a Fields Member in the School of Applied and Engineering Physics and the Department of Computer Science at Cornell.

Key takeaways

Mark Wilde belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Mark Wilde to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Mark Wilde from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Mark McMahon Wilde is an American quantum information scientist. He is a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University, and he is also a Fields Member in the School of Applied and Engineering Physics and the Department of Computer Science at Cornell. Wilde's research spans quantum information theory (including communication trade-offs, quantum rate-distortion), network quantum information, quantum error correction, quantum optical communication, quantum computational complexity, and quantum entropy inequalities. His research results on quantum entropy inequalities, time travel and quantum cloning, trade-offs in quantum communication, and quantum entanglement measures have been communicated in popular science media. He has written or coauthored two textbooks on quantum information theory. The first textbook utilizes the von Neumann entropy and its variants and the notion of typical subspace to present the capacities of quantum communication channels. The second textbook utilizes the Renyi entropy and its variants, the hypothesis testing relative entropy, and the smooth max-relative entropy to present the capacities of quantum communication channels. It also has a part dedicated to foundational concepts in quantum information and entanglement theory and another part to feedback-assisted capacities, representing more recent developments from 2013 and on.

Education Wilde graduated from Jesuit High School in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1998. He received his bachelor's degree in computer engineering from Texas A&M University in 2002, with support from the Thomas Barton Scholarship. He received his Master's degree in electrical engineering from Tulane University in 2004. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from University of Southern California in 2008, under the supervision of Todd Brun and with support from a School of Engineering Fellowship. His Ph.D. thesis was entitled "Quantum Coding with Entanglement" and contributed to the theory of entanglement-assisted quantum error correction. During this time, he also received the Best Teaching Assistant Award from the Department of Electrical Engineering at USC. After his Ph.D. studies, he conducted postdoctoral work in the School of Computer Science at McGill University from 2009–2013 under the supervision of Patrick Hayden, focusing on the topics of quantum information theory, quantum error correction, and quantum computational complexity.

Career During the summer of 2013, he was a visiting scholar at Raytheon BBN Technologies and the Research Laboratory of Electronics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In August 2013, he became an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Center for Computation and Technology at Louisiana State University (LSU). In August 2018, he was promoted to associate professor with tenure. He is also affiliated with the Hearne Institute for Theoretical Physics at LSU. From January 2020 until December 2020, he was a visiting professor at the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics (on sabbatical leave from LSU). In July 2022, he became Associate Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University. In July 2026, he was promoted to Full Professor. He was associate editor for Quantum Information Theory for IEEE Transactions on Information Theory from May 2015 to December 2021 and for New Journal of Physics from January 2018 until January 2022. He has been on the editorial board for Quantum Information Processing since March 2012. He co-organized the Southwest Quantum Information and Technology Workshop in 2017 and 2018 and the Beyond i.i.d. in Information Theory Conference in 2015, 2016, and 2020. He was the program committee chair for the 2018 Quantum Communication, Measurement, and Computing Conference, the 2017 Conference on Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication, and Cryptography, and the 2023 Asian Quantum Information Science Conference.

Honors Centre de Recherches Mathematiques Thematic Postdoctoral Fellowship (2011-2013) Senior Member of the IEEE (2013) APS-IUSSTF Professorship Award in Physics (2014) National Science Foundation Career Development Award (2014) LSU Alumni Association Rising Faculty Research Award (2015) LSU College of Science Faculty Research Award (2016) AHP-Birkhauser Prize, awarded to "the most remarkable contribution" published in the journal Annales Henri Poincare (2018) LSU Rainmaker Mid-Career Scholar Award (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) (2019) Outstanding Referee of American Physical Society (2021) IEEE Fellow, "for contributions to the relative-entropy framework and theorems for quantum communications" (2023) Dorothy and Fred Chau Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research Project Supervision (2023–2024) James McCormick Family Advising Award for Outstanding Advisors of First-Year Undergraduate Students (2025) Cornell Engineering Research Excellence Award (2025)

See also Rényi relative entropy entanglement-assisted quantum error correction strong subadditivity of quantum entropy Erdős number 2

References

External links Personal website Google Scholar page Mathematics Genealogy Project Academic tree

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mark Wilde

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mark Wilde claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Mark Wilde before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Mark Wilde ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Mark Wilde

In research: Mark Wilde appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Mark Wilde in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Mark Wilde is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1980 births, Living people, Louisiana State University faculty, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mark Wilde outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Mark Wilde in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Mark Wilde means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Mark Wilde out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mark Wilde in simple terms?

Why does Mark Wilde matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Mark Wilde?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Mark Wilde.