Short Bio:

Ms Shivani Mahashakti Pillay is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at the University of KwaZulu Natal. Her Masters research focused on quantum machine learning, specifically quantum kernel methods. Her current research focuses on developing quantum algorithms for solving differential equations.

Education:

Masters of Science (Computer Science, Cum Laude) – University of KwaZulu Natal

ArXiv pre-prints can be found here.

Google Scholar.

Work Experience:

2020 – Tutor (Introduction to Computer Science, Data Structures), School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science.

Recent Publications:

1. Fonou-Dombeu, J.V., Achary, T., Genders, E., Mahabeer, S. and Pillay, S.M., 2021. COVIDonto: An ontology model for acquisition and sharing of COVID-19 data. In Model and Data Engineering: 10th International Conference, MEDI 2021, Tallinn, Estonia, June 21–23, 2021, Proceedings 10 (pp. 227-240). Springer International Publishing.
2. Achary, T., Pillay, S., Pillai, S.M., Mqadi, M., Genders, E. and Ezugwu, A.E., 2021. A performance study of meta‐heuristic approaches for quadratic assignment problem. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, 33(17), p.e6321.
3. Pillay, S.M., Sinayskiy, I., Jembere, E. and Petruccione, F., 2021, December. Implementing quantum-kernel-based classifiers in the nisq era. In Southern African Conference for Artificial Intelligence Research (pp. 257-273). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
4. Pillay, S.M., Sinayskiy, I., Jembere, E. and Petruccione, F., 2023. A Multi-Class SWAP-Test Classifier. arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.02994.

Teaching experience:

Teaching Assistant for COMP718: Quantum Computing (Sem 2: 2021, 2022)

Teaching Assistant for Quantum Computing Workshop for the CSIR (March-April 2022)

Contact Details:
Office : H3-20 (03-100)

e-mail: 217039130@stu.ukzn.ac.za