Posts

This month, Elia Bertoldo started working in our group as post-doc. He completed his bachelor and master in Italy, then he did his PhD at Ludwig Maximilian University (Munich). Welcome aboard, Elia!

High-school student Carla Caro Villanova recently got awarded the first prize of the competition XXXII Certamen Jóvenes Investigadores that is called out annualy by the Spanish Youth Institute (INJUVE). The prize rewards excellence in the scientific projects of Spanish high-school students nationwide. Carla indepdentently conducted her research project co-supervised by David López-Núñez from our group and presented her work with the tile ‘To what extent do quantum annealing computers outperform classical computers?

Since the installation of the first dilution refrigerator did not pass much time. Nonetheless, our group prepared the laboratory for the installation of the second unit, this time the larger BlueFors LD-400 , which was installed succesfully last week. We are now ready to wire up and equip the fridges with our first in-house experiments. For more pictures click here .

This week the latest batch of newcomers arrived and started working in our group. Hence, we welcome aboard Alba Torras and Luca Cozzolino . Both just recently finished their Master’s and will continue to work on a PhD. Alba studied at UAB and UPC while Luca completed his studies at Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II.

We are pleased to announce that the constructions for the new Quantum Computing Lab (QCL) have been completed! After a preliminary phase of planning, a longer than expected phase of construction took place (thanks to Covid19), not missing hands-on work efforts by ourselves. The entire interior of the QCL has been renovated and rebuild to meet our demands and specifications. Andy designed a partition wall for thermal insulation demonstrating Norwegian rigidity and durability.

We welcome the new PhD student and “la Caixa” fellow Boris Nedyalkov to our team. Boris holds a BSc in Physics from Sofia University and recently finished his graduate studies in Electrical Engineering at Tokyo University.

The Quantum Computing Technologies (QCT) group at the Institute for High Energy Physics (IFAE) in Barcelona offers a postdoctoral position within the project AVaQus (Annealing-Based Variational Quantum Processors) funded by the FET Open EU program and coordinated by IFAE . The AVaQus project aims at building a small-scale coherent quantum annealer that is programmable and addresses relevant real-life problems. The project represents an important step towards the consolidation of quantum annealing to become an established quantum computing technology, made in Europe.

The Quantum Computing Technologies (QCT) group at the Institute for High Energy Physics (IFAE) in Barcelona offers a PhD position within the project AVaQus (Annealing-Based Variational Quantum Processors) funded by the FET Open EU program and coordinated by IFAE . Project AVaQus aims at building a small-scale coherent quantum annealer that is programmable and addresses relevant real-life problems. The project represents an important step towards the consolidation of quantum annealing to become an established quantum computing technology, made in Europe.

We congratulate our group leader, Dr. Pol Forn-Díaz , on receving the prestigious Ramón y Cajal fellowship by the Spanish Ministries of Universities, and Science and Innovation. The award is given to young researchers to aid them consolidate their early-stage careers at a public Spanish research institution. With this award, Dr. Forn-Díaz will continue to establish the QCT group at IFAE and extend its network of collaborators. The fellowship will start in 2021 and will last 5 years, including a research budget.

Despite the current situation due to COVID-19, which unfortunately did not allow for everyone’s attendance, we recently celebrated the 3rd year of existence of our interinstitutional Quantic group. Found in 2017 on June 1st as a collaboration between Universitat de Barcelona (UB) and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), the Quantic group has expanded and now includes also the Institut de Fisica d’Altes Energies (IFAE), where we are currently setting up our quantum computing laboratory.