IRIS-HEP Fellow: Devon Bontrager
Fellowship dates: May – Aug, 2025
Home Institution: University of Kansas
Project: Cooperative Track Building with Heuristic and Quantum Acceleration
This project aims to explore novel ways to improve track reconstruction performance for the HL-LHC through three innovations: (1) cooperative track building where parallel hypotheses share quality metrics and prune weaker candidates; (2) adaptation of underexplored heuristic methods including Ant Colony Optimization, Particle Swarm Optimization, Simulated Annealing, Genetic Algorithms, best-first A*/Hungarian matching; and (3) a quantum-parallel proof of concept using QUBO-based seed selection on quantum devices. The unified Python framework developed during the project will benchmark trade-offs in speed, accuracy, and resource consumption, and highlight the potential of hybrid classical–quantum pipelines for real-time, high-accuracy tracking in high-pileup environments.
More information: My project proposal
Mentors:
-
Dr. Liv Vage
- - "", Devon Bontrager,
Current Status
A placeholder for status updates
Contact me: