Rosa Di Felice
Rosa Di Felice is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Quantitative and Computational Biology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, USA. She also holds a part-time appointment as a Research Director in the Italian National Research Council at the Institute of Nanoscience in Modena.
She got her BS+MS (1992) and PhD (1996) in Physics at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, working on ab initio molecular dynamics simulations of solid surfaces and interfaces. After two postdocs in the USA and Italy working on similar topics, her attention moved in the early 2000s towards the electronic structure of biological molecules in the context of nanotechnologies. She uses computational methods that solve the equations of physical theories to describe the electronic properties of molecules and molecular complexes, while taking into account conformational fluctuations that are inherent in flexible systems. Lately, she has turned her attention to the use of quantum computers in scientific fields where classical computation has brought significant progress, such as biology, chemistry and materials science. Moreover, she is looking at the role of quantum effects in biological processes.
PHYS513 Syllabus: PHYS513_Spring2026_DiFelice_Nakano.pdf
Graduate Students
I am a Physics Ph.D. student and collaborate with Prof Rosa di Felice to seek for application of quantum error correction/mitigation on near-term quantum algorithms. Before working on quantum computing, I studied observational astronomy and cosmology in my first two years at USC.
Xiyang Liu
Since 2025, Xiyang has collaborated with Professor Rosa Di Felice. Xiyang earned a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, with honors, from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2023, where she conducted research with Professor Ruixue Xu on non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. After completing her undergraduate studies, she spent one year working as a research assistant. Her current research interests include applied quantum computing and error mitigation.
Undergraduate Students
Garret Holt
Garret Holt is a double B.S. student in Physics and Applied & Computational Mathematics at USC, researching Materials Simulation using Density Function Theory and Variational Quantum Algorithms under Dr. Rosa Di Felice. He has experience in Astrophysics Research, Analog Black Hole Research, Venture Capital and is an incoming Investment Banking Analyst at Moelis & Co. His interests include mathematical finance, playing the piano & guitar, and rock climbing.
