Krishna Upadhyay
PhD Researcher
Quantum Software
Post-Quantum Cryptography
Multi-Agent AI
PhD researcher building at the frontier of quantum software, post-quantum cryptography, and multi-agent AI systems. My work centers on benchmarking, taking these emerging technologies and putting them under pressure to see what actually holds up. I care about turning complex theoretical systems into measurable, reliable results that others can build on. I'm actively seeking internship opportunities where I can bring this research mindset to a team solving hard, real-world problems.
Krishna Upadhyay
PhD Researcher
Quantum Software
Post-Quantum Cryptography
Multi-Agent AI
PhD researcher building at the frontier of quantum software, post-quantum cryptography, and multi-agent AI systems. My work centers on benchmarking, taking these emerging technologies and putting them under pressure to see what actually holds up. I care about turning complex theoretical systems into measurable, reliable results that others can build on. I'm actively seeking internship opportunities where I can bring this research mindset to a team solving hard, real-world problems.
News
Oct 21, 2026
AcceptedOur work on generating a security and privacy taxonomy from mobile app reviews was accepted at IEEE BigData 2026.
Oct 17, 2026
ReleasedAdded templates to QisPlay: start a project from a starter template, beginning with eight labs for an introductory quantum computing course.
Oct 16, 2026
AwardReceived a student travel grant to attend ACM PQQS 2026 and present our poster on LLM agents for post-quantum cryptographic migrations.
Oct 14, 2026
ReleasedReleased QisDebug, a zero-touch debugger that records everything that happens to a Qiskit circuit, from construction through transpilation to execution. Now on PyPI.
Oct 12, 2026
ReleasedLaunched QisPlay, a Python and Qiskit playground that runs Qiskit and Qiskit Aer entirely in the browser.
Sep 28, 2026
AcceptedOur poster on LLM agents for post-quantum cryptographic migrations is heading to ACM PQQS 2026.
Publications
Security and Privacy Taxonomy Generation from Mobile App Reviews
Moghis Fereidouni, Krishna Upadhyay, Umar Farooq, A.B. Siddique
2026 IEEE International Conference on Big Data
Poster: Evaluating LLM Agents for Post-Quantum Cryptographic Migrations
Krishna Upadhyay, Umar Farooq
2026 ACM Conference on Post-Quantum and Quantum-based Security (PQQS) (Poster Track)
Daniel Liu, Krishna Upadhyay, Vinaik Chhetri, A.B. Siddique, Umar Farooq
2025 IEEE International Conference on Big Data
Krishna Upadhyay, Vinaik Chhetri, A.B. Siddique, Umar Farooq
4th IEEE International Conference on Quantum Software (QSW)
Vinaik Chhetri, Krishna Upadhyay, A.B. Siddique, Umar Farooq
2025 IEEE International Conference on Big Data
Umar Farooq, Krishna Upadhyay
arXiv
Joseph Strauss, Krishna Upadhyay, A.B. Siddique, Ibrahim Baggili, Umar Farooq
46th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P) (Poster Track)
Moshood A. Fakorede, Krishna Upadhyay, A.B. Siddique, Umar Farooq
arXiv
Krishna Upadhyay, Moshood A. Fakorede, Umar Farooq
arXiv
Projects
LLMBench
Highly configurable benchmarking CLI for evaluating LLM performance with highly customizable datasets

BreakMyChange
Interactive educational tool for making changes denomination targeting young learners
Awards & Grants
Student Travel Grant
2026 ACM Conference on Post-Quantum and Quantum-based Security (PQQS)
Awarded to attend ACM PQQS 2026 and present the poster "Evaluating LLM Agents for Post-Quantum Cryptographic Migrations."
4th IEEE International Conference on Quantum Software (QSW) 2025
Awarded for "Analyzing the Evolution and Maintenance of Quantum Software Repositories."
Certifications
IBM
Basics of Quantum Information
IBM
Fundamentals of Quantum Algorithms
IBM
Education
2024 - Present
2024 - Present
PhD in Computer Science
Louisiana State University
GPA 4.0/4.0. Expected graduation August 2028.
2015 - 2019
2015 - 2019
Bachelor of Computer Engineering
Work Experience
2024 - Present
2024 - Present
Graduate Assistant
Louisiana State University
Built datasets of quantum software commits and issues and of quantum simulator bugs, covering 21,000 repositories, 1.2 million commits, and 157K issues
Led an empirical study of bugs in quantum simulators, analyzing 394 bug reports across 12 simulators
Co-developed MobileDev-Bench, a benchmark of 407 real-world issue-resolution tasks from 19 mobile app repositories
Evaluated LLM agents on migrating 10 codebases to NIST post-quantum cryptographic algorithms
Quantum
Qiskit
Data & ML
Python
pandas
NumPy
SciPy
scikit-learn
PyTorch
Repository Mining
GitHub GraphQL API
2021 - 2024
2021 - 2024
Software Engineer
Kathmandu, Nepal
Shipped and maintained a Next.js web app alongside two standalone Expo/React Native apps for iOS and Android within one product ecosystem, serving 1,000 active users
Designed the GraphQL API layer with Apollo Server and GraphQL Nexus, backed by Prisma and PostgreSQL, handling 1,000 requests/day
Rolled out self-hosted feature flagging, product analytics, and attribute-based access control across the stack, reducing latency by 30%
Owned deployment and infrastructure on AWS using Terraform and Docker, cutting deployment time by 50%
Wrote unit and integration tests with Mocha and Cypress, raising test coverage to 92% and cutting production incidents by 40%
Frontend
Next.js
TypeScript
Mobile
Expo
React Native
API & Data
GraphQL
Apollo
Nexus
Prisma
PostgreSQL
Platform
Firebase
Flagsmith
Metabase
CASL
Testing
Mocha
Cypress
Infra
AWS
Terraform
Docker
2019 - 2021
2019 - 2021
Quality Assurance Engineer
Kathmandu, Nepal
Automated end-to-end test suites with Cypress and Selenium to catch regressions before release
Ran manual and integration testing across web applications to validate functionality and cross-service behavior
Built test tooling and scripts in JavaScript and Python to speed up QA cycles
Automation
Cypress
Selenium
Testing
Manual Testing
Integration Testing
Languages
JavaScript
Python
Teaching & Service
Teaching Assistant
Introduction to Quantum Computing and Introduction to Cybersecurity, supporting 140 students across 3 semesters.
Subreviewer
FSTTCS 2026
46th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science.

