Graduate student, Kyle Wright, successfully defended his PhD dissertation, titled "Inverse Problems and Inverse Eigenvalue Problems in Quantum Sensing," on December 5, 2025. Kyle is co-advised by Prof. Boaz Ilan and Prof. Roummel Marcia. Prof. Arnold Kim served on his dissertation committee.
Kyle received his B.S. in Mathematics from East Tennessee State University in 2020. Kyle was part of the inaugural cohort of the "Convergence of Nano-Engineered Devices for Environmental and Sustainable Applications (CONDESA)" traineeship, which is an NSF-funded Research and Training Program at UC Merced that introduced Kyle to the research area of quantum mechanics, collaborating with Prof. Michael Scheibner's Quantum Matter Group. Kyle was also awarded a Graduate Student Researcher Fellowship by the NSF-funded "Data-Intensive Research And Computing (DIRAC)" Research Training Group Program and by the UC Merced Valley Institute for Sustainability, Technology, and Agriculture (VISTA) F3 program, collaborating with Professor of Soil Physics, Dr. Teamrat Ghezzehei. Kyle has presented his research at the 2022 WAVES Conference in Paliseau, France; 2023 IEEE International Workshop on Computational Advances in Multi-Sensor Adaptive Processing in Los Suenos, Costa Rica; 2025 IEEE International Conference on Quantum Communications, Networking, and Computing in Nara, Japan; and 2025 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium in Brisbane, Australia. Kyle will join the VISTA program as a postdoctoral researcher in January, 2026.
Congratulations, Dr. Wright!
Dr. Wright's selected publications:
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K. Wright, R. Marcia, T. Ghezzehei and B. Ilan, “Groundwater Modeling Using Gravity-Gradient Cartography,” 2025 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, Brisbane, Australia, 2025, doi: 10.1109/IGARSS55030.2025.11243779
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B. Ilan, R. Marcia, M. Scheibner, and K. Wright, “Inverse Eigenvalue Difference Problems for Quantum Dots”, Numerical Linear Algebra with Applications, 32:3, e70019, 2025, doi: 10.1002/nla.70019
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K. Wright, R. Marcia, M. Scheibner and B. Ilan, “Towards Motion Sensing Using Asymmetric Coupled Quantum Dots,” 2025 International Conference on Quantum Communications, Networking, and Computing, Nara, Japan, 2025, pp. 437- 441, doi: 10.1109/QCNC64685.2025.00090
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K. Wright, R. Marcia, M. Scheibner and B. Ilan, “Parameterized Inverse Eigenvalue Problem for Quantum Sensing,” 2023 IEEE 9th International Workshop on Computational Advances in Multi-Sensor Adaptive Processing, Herradura, Costa Rica, 2023, pp. 351-355, doi: 10.1109/CAMSAP58249.2023.10403442
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D. Marquard, K. Wright, and R. Marcia, “Image classification and training with severe data loss”, Proc. SPIE 12227, Applications of Machine Learning 2022, 122270T, doi: 10.1117/12.2633172
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K. Wright, R. Marcia, and B. Ilan, “Numerical methods for a Schrodinger equation inverse eigenvalue problem”, Waves 2022, Palaiseau, France.
Kyle's research was supported by the following grants: NSF-RTG: Data-Intensive Research and Computing (DMS 1840265), NSF: BIGDATA: IA: Collaborative Research: Parsimonious Anomaly Detection in Sequencing Data (IIS 1741490), the NSF-NRT CONDESA: Convergence of Nano-engineered Devices for Environmental and Sustainable Applications (DGE 2125510), and US Department of Commerce, Economic Development Agency Build Back Better Regional Challenge, Investment No. 07 79 07893, “Fresno-Merced Future of Food (F3) Initiative” and the UC Merced iCREATE Project, Award No. 07 79 07913.
