Shaun Pexton '26: On qubits, jazz, and making the most of Yale
Shaun Pexton came to Yale from Brighton, UK — arriving with a childhood obsession with quantum mechanics, a jazz musician's ear for improvisation, and an appetite for making the most of everything Yale had to offer. The Applied Physics and Computer Science double major has led the Yale Undergraduate Quantum Computing Club, taught computer science at local schools through Code Haven, served as a FroCo, co-authored research papers, and collaborated with quantum experts at IBM — all while playing jazz across New Haven.
We talked with Shaun about his time at Yale and his plans for MIT this fall.
You turned down Cambridge to come to Yale. What drove that decision?
The main thing I had to decide between was staying in the UK, studying a specific course with a narrow focus at Cambridge, versus coming to the US and having a broader academic experience. I was interested in so many different things, and the constraint of one particular course wasn’t what I wanted. So the US was speaking to me.
More specifically, since around 7th grade, I’d been reading science magazines and getting deeply interested in quantum — reading Leonard Susskind and George Hrabovsky’s The Theoretical Minimum, getting excited about it. Yale stood out as a place at the cutting edge of that field. A lot of these ideas were literally invented here, and so many giants in the field do their work here. I even put on my application that I wanted to join the quantum computing club — and now I’m the president of it, so it came full circle.
For me, it was both the opportunity to study arts and sciences broadly — I’m a double major in Applied Physics and CS, which I never would have been able to do in the UK; I didn’t even know it was a thing — and the particular strength Yale has in quantum. Those two things really brought me here.
You seem to have made the most of your time at Yale — well beyond the academics.
Absolutely. Everything I’ve experienced here has been amazing. I’m also very involved in the arts — I’m really into jazz and have played in the jazz ensembles since my first year. I’ve been involved in community outreach through Dwight Hall; I’ve been on the board of Code Haven, volunteering in local schools, teaching science and music. I’ve been a FroCo [First-Year Counselor] this year as well. I love painting this broader picture of what Yale offers for my first-year students — helping them access research, for example. I didn’t know I could do serious research until late in my sophomore year, and now I’m helping my students with things like how to email professors. The professors here are so open and accessible — it’s really not that difficult. I just didn’t know that was something I could do.
Your interest in quantum goes back to 7th grade. How did it develop from there into serious research?
It was really just a childhood obsession. I would read these science magazines on the bus to school or to running practice, and I would just be engrossed in these stories about particles that could communicate with each other in a way that just didn’t really sit with me comfortably. And that was a good thing, because that made me want to look for more. I was always looking for the next quantum story.
You’ve done research with Prof. Aleksander Kubica and IBM. How did that come about?
It grew out of my senior project, where I was exploring open questions in quantum computing that were both interesting and relevant. Not just abstract, but things that would actually matter for the systems we’re trying to build. I narrowed it down to an area that didn’t have much literature behind it, brought it to Prof. Kubica, and we developed it from there.
One great thing about Yale professors is that they’re very well-respected and well-connected. Through Prof. Kubica, I got access to researchers at IBM who are very interested in the topic I’m working on — they’re investing billions into building these quantum computing systems. We started collaborating during the summer and I’m still in frequent contact with the team.
You’ve talked about surprising connections between jazz and quantum mechanics. What’s that about?
I read this book called The Jazz of Physics, written by Stephon Alexander, who is a jazz musician and a physicist. He talks about the connections between uncertainty in quantum mechanics and improvisation in jazz. Jazz is really about expression through improvisation. And I was really struck by what I am doing when I’m playing jazz: in theory, there are an infinite number of ways you can approach a 12-bar blues. There’s this uncertainty, but you decide on a path, and then it collapses to that route.
I think jazz is very creative. And quantum is very creative. The way that I design schemes, the way I think about how qubits move, how I design error correction approaches — it’s so creative. You start with these mathematical tools, bring that to a physical picture, talk to people, understand there’s this extra item to consider, bring it all together, and create something new. I think jazz really helps this process, even if I can’t really put my finger on how exactly.
You’re heading to MIT for your Ph.D. What will you be working on?
I’ll be joining the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department, which is quite broad and interdisciplinary. I’ll be working at the intersection of physics and CS, which is exactly what I’ve been doing at Yale. My particular focus will be quantum error correction and architectures — building on the work I’ve already been doing with Prof. Kubica and Prof. Yongshan Ding. With Prof. Ding, for example, I’ve been thinking about the specific physics of devices at Quantum Circuits Inc. — the startup Prof. Robert Schoelkopf founded — looking at noise models and building tailored schemes that leverage their noise profiles.
What advice would you give to an incoming student?
There are so many opportunities here, and if you just reach out for help — whether that’s resources for research, resources for clubs, or if you really just need support — there are so many things here that you may not know about. I remember back when I was a first-year, I was slow to reach out. I was an international student, I was new, I felt like a lot of people knew each other already. But just knowing that these resources are there and that you can ask — it might not work out every single time, but in a lot of cases, there are ways that you can be supported or ways that you can reach towards the things that you’re looking for.
More Details
Published Date
May 11, 2026
