QuantumBW Colloquium: Quantum Computing in Physics, Chemistry and Optimization

Quantum computers are predicted to solve problems with a computational complexity which is unachievable for their classical counterparts. However, quantum error correction is still an unreached dream and a lot of attention is given to algorithms on current day noisy quantum computers. In this talk, Prof. Marko Rancic will give recent advances in quantum computing in chemistry, physics and for industry scale optimization problems. The focus of this talk will be industry scale use cases on current day hardware. Some attention will be given to a synergy between high performance and quantum computing.

From 2013 to 2017 Marko Rančić was employed as an early-stage researcher at the University of Konstanz in Germany. From 2017 to 2019 he worked as a postdoctoral researcher et the University of Basel in Switzerland. Then, from 2019 to 2023 he worked in industry and was globally responsible for the research in quantum computing of TotalEnergies and was based in the outskirts of Paris in France. There, he managed a multi-million-euro research portfolio, with responsibilities spanning from conventional line management to researcher (intern, PhD, postdoc) supervision. He came back to academia in 2023, where he accepted an assistant professor role at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, where he was also the principal investigator of the applied quantum computing group. Finally, he joined the University of Luxembourg in 2024 as a tenured associate professor in HPC and Quantum Computing.