High school student · Class of 2027

Austin Amissah

I am a student at The Lawrenceville School working on projects in physics, computation, and energy. The main one finds the cheapest way to run a home solar battery, saving a real Colorado home $1.93 on a typical summer weekday. Then I ran the same problem on a real quantum computer, and wrote down exactly what survived the noise. For a newer project, I reproduced the best known quantum circuit for breaking ECDSA, the piece of math that decides who owns every Bitcoin, and mapped why its cost is at a floor.

I like learning about new technology; right now that includes quantum computing. I try to be precise and do work that can be checked. I write up what I find, including the parts that did not work, in the hope it is useful to someone doing the same.

Portfolio

Selected projects

A selection of my research and builds.

In progress

Quantum Solar Optimization

My program finds the cheapest way to run a home solar battery - it saves a real Colorado home $1.93 on a typical summer weekday. I then ran the same problem on a real quantum computer to measure how it does against an answer I already knew. It only handled a day cut down to 2 decisions instead of 24; noise buried everything bigger.

PythonQiskitQAOAOptimizationEnergy
Complete, for now

Quantum Circuit Optimization for ECDSA

ECDSA is the piece of math that decides who owns every Bitcoin: it stops anyone else from spending your coins. A big enough quantum computer could break it. For ECDSA.fail, an open competition measuring how big, I reproduced the best known circuit and mapped why its cost is at a floor.

RustQuantum computingCryptographyOptimization

This summer

Research internship at Brookhaven National Laboratory

I have started the High School Research Program (HSRP), a six-week research internship at a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory.

Get in touch

Interested in this work?

Email is the best way to reach me. I read everything, though replies can take a while.