Michael Paley

michael[at]paley.io

I'm studying physics at UC Berkeley, originally from London. I do quantum computing research and founded Page4Change, a literacy charity with an AI platform.

Research

I've done two years of independent quantum computing research, supervised by Professor Sergii Strelchuk at the University of Oxford. It led to Pathfinder, a χ²-calibrated optimizer for variational quantum algorithms that addresses barren plateaus and beat state-of-the-art benchmarks on canonical chemistry problems. Read the paper (PDF).

Page4Change

I founded Page4Change, a literacy charity with an AI platform. In just over a year we partnered with 30 schools and reached more than 2,000 students, with a team of six that I managed.

Before Berkeley

At St Paul's School in London I was UK Team Captain at the International Young Physicists' Tournament, Electronics Lead on a CanSat launched from a rocket, and ran the Halley Society.

Markets

I run algorithmic trading bots on Polymarket and do quantitative research on prediction markets.

Where I've worked

I worked at SmartSolar on financing large solar installations, where I built a financial model that takes energy consumption, installation costs and financing scenarios through to system sizing, customer pricing and projected savings.

Outside of work

I run and listen to podcasts.