Department of Computer Science professor secures €1.95m European research grant for quantum project

A quantum computing professor from the Department of Computer Science is among three Oxford professors to be awarded prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grants. 

Associate Professor Aleks Kissinger was among 308 researchers selected for a share of €627 million in ERC grants to support scientists and scholars at the career stage where they may still be consolidating their own independent research teams to pursue their most promising scientific ideas.  

Aleks has been offered €1.95 million for an ERC project that will address practical challenges in developing and verifying software for quantum computers.  

Quantum computers offer immense potential for solving challenges currently beyond the reach of classical computers, including problems in chemical development, materials science, drug discovery, finance, and industrial optimisation. This is due to their properties of superposition (where quantum bits can exist in multiple states simultaneously, rather than being only off or on) and entanglement (where the state of one quantum bit influences another no matter how far apart they are). But quantum algorithms and software are currently in their infancy, and new programming techniques are needed before these capabilities can be utilised.

He said: ‘It is becoming increasingly possible to access and experiment with real, small-scale quantum hardware, but it is clear the challenges involved in designing quantum software are much broader than just the discovery of new algorithms. 

‘Our research programme will address three major fundamental challenges: to develop better quantum compilers for translating high-level algorithms to real hardware; to simulate more complex quantum computations with classical computers; and to automatically verify the exact or approximate correctness of quantum computations.’     

This work will be based on a mathematical method called the ZX calculus, which represents quantum computations as graphs that can be transformed and simplified using a handful of basic rules.    

‘It is an amazing honour to be offered this grant. I would like to thank my students and collaborators who have made so much of the work building up to this possible, and I look forward to building one of the largest groups in Europe addressing practical challenges in developing software for quantum computers.’ Department of Computer Science Associate Professor Aleks Kissinger

The ERC grants are part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme.   

Oxford University Associate Professor of Theoretical Particle Physics Fabrizio Caola and Economics Professor Anders Kock were also awarded ERC grants.  

President of the European Research Council Professor Maria Leptin said: “The new Consolidator Grant winners represent some of the best of European research. It is disappointing that we cannot support every deserving project simply due to budget constraints; around 100 proposals identified as excellent in our rigorous evaluation will be left unfunded. Can Europe afford to let such talent go unrealised?   

“We need to collectively advocate for increased investment in research and innovation. Our shared goal must be to ensure that no brilliant idea goes unfunded in Europe, and no promising career is left unfulfilled.”