Marina Valeryevna Bastrakova is a Nizhny Novgorod theoretical physicist, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, and senior researcher at Lobachevsky University (UNN). She specializes in superconducting qubits and condensed matter physics, as well as in applying artificial intelligence methods to medical diagnostics.[1][2]
Education and scientific career
She was educated at the Faculty of Physics of UNN: from 2005 to 2011 she completed a master's program in Physics, and from 2011 to 2014 she did postgraduate studies at the same faculty. In 2016 she defended her dissertation for the degree of Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences in the specialty "Condensed Matter Physics," titled "Amplitude Spectroscopy and State Monitoring of Superconducting Qubits," under the supervision of Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor A. M. Satanin.[3] The academic degree of Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences was awarded following her postgraduate studies.[2]
From 2019 to 2025 she was affiliated with UNN, and from 2022 to 2025 additionally with the Russian Quantum Center; in 2021 she collaborated with the Moscow Technical University of Communications and Informatics.[2] At UNN she holds several positions at once: senior researcher at the Artificial Intelligence Research Center and at the research laboratory "Artificial Intelligence in Preventive Medicine," senior researcher in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the Institute of Information Technology, Mathematics and Mechanics, associate professor in the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Faculty of Physics, and head of the Laboratory of Nanostructure Theory at the Physical-Technical Research Institute (NIFTI). She has worked at UNN since 2008: she began as a senior laboratory assistant in the research laboratory of the Department of Theoretical Physics (2008–2009), then became an engineer at NIFTI UNN (2010–2011) and a junior researcher at NIFTI (2011–2017); since December 2016 she has headed the Laboratory of Nanostructure Theory at NIFTI and is a member of the Academic Council of NIFTI UNN.[3][1]
Research interests and publications
Main research areas are superconducting qubits, condensed matter physics, quantum computing, and the use of neural networks in medicine. According to the CoLab scientometric database, as of 2025 she had published 49 scientific papers, which together received 294 citations; her h-index is 10, and her publication activity spans the period from 2010 to 2026. In 2016–2018 she won the competition for the scholarship of the President of the Russian Federation for young scientists and postgraduate students in the priority area "Strategic Information Technologies": the grant was directed toward developing a supercomputer software package for simulating experiments on monitoring the states of Josephson qubits and arrays of 3D qubits in an electrodynamic resonator.
In 2018 she won the Presidential Program of the Russian Science Foundation as the head of RSF grant No. 18-72-00158 on the detection of single microwave photons by an antenna array based on bistable Josephson sensor elements. In December 2020 she won the competition for grants of the President of Russia for young scientists with a Candidate of Sciences degree for 2021–2022: grant MK-2740.2021.1.2 was devoted to the microwave optics of open superconducting waveguides for quantum informatics tasks.[3][3][3][2] She is proficient in the programming languages C/C++, Fortran, and Python, as well as the VASP, Wien2k, and Wolfram Mathematica packages; she supervises postgraduate students and student research projects.[2]
Among her current projects is a hybrid quantum-classical neural network for analyzing brain MRI scans, created in the laboratory "Artificial Intelligence in Preventive Medicine." Bastrakova was the author of the study and explained how the system works: a quantum layer processes a compressed set of image features, which makes it possible to achieve deep analysis with a significantly smaller number of trainable parameters than in traditional neural networks. The experiments established that models with more developed repeating quantum blocks better preserve accuracy on noisy and defective scans; the mechanism behind this effect is planned to be confirmed on real quantum hardware.[1]
Professional development
She regularly completes professional development courses at UNN and other scientific organizations. In 2018 she completed programs on modern nanotechnology, high-performance computing, and the teaching of natural science disciplines. In 2024 she completed a course on the basics of using artificial intelligence in education, and in the same year a program on superconducting technologies for quantum information processing at the National University of Science and Technology MISIS. In 2025 she completed training in modern methods of quantum computing, inclusive education at the university level, and corruption prevention.[1]
Sources
- phys.unn.ru — In 2016, Bastrakova defended her dissertation for the degree of Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences in the specialty "Condensed Matter Physics"; the topic of the work was "Amplitude
- person.unn.ru — UNN Staff: Bastrakova Marina Valeryevna (archive)
- colab.ws — Bastrakova Marina Valeryevna (archive)