Quantum Experience Academic Research Program Award at the Federico II

The University of Naples Federico II has received the IBM Quantum Researcher Access Award. Professor Giovanni Acampora receives access to an IBM quantum computer reserved for university researchers to conduct advanced research on quantum artificial intelligence.

The important scientific recognition will also have a significant economic impact as it will allow the University to gain access to computing resources worth several hundred thousand euros, placing the Federico II in a privileged position in the field of research related to quantum technologies.

Merging artificial intelligence and quantum computing to enable the design and implementation of massive data analysis tools capable of supporting the realization of the next generation of intelligent systems. This is the ambitious research project led by Professor Giovanni Acampora of the Department of Physics "Ettore Pancini" of the University of Naples Federico II, professor of Artificial Intelligence, with a past as a researcher at prestigious European universities such as the Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands).

The primary goal of the project is to improve the performance of current artificial intelligence systems, which are increasingly pervasive and indispensable in improving the quality of daily activities, by integrating them in quantum computing contexts where, the use of phenomena such asentanglement, superposition and interference, can produce computational advantages not achievable by current classical computing architectures, neither now nor in the future. In fact, at present, conventional computing systems have reached such a level of miniaturization that further performance improvements are impossible without the operations performed by transistors, the basic elements of classical computing, being altered by microscopic phenomena typical of quantum mechanics.

In such a scenario, it is necessary to begin thinking about alternative computational paradigms, such as quantum computing, that are capable of purposefully exploiting the aforementioned microscopic phenomena in order to improve the computational performance of computational systems. In particular, in Professor Acampora's vision, such quantum phenomena could be integrated into the development of efficient algorithms for the optimization of artificial intelligence models. In such a scenario, Acampora and his collaborator, Dr. Autilia Vitiello, are designing and developing biologically inspired optimization algorithms, known as genetic algorithms, on real quantum computers. Early tests performed on the quantum platform made available by IBM have shown very promising results, prompting the U.S. company to award Professor Acampora and Dr. Vitiello with an IBM Quantum Academic Research Program Award. This award is given to the research groups most active in the field of quantum computing and its applications, with the aim of supporting excellence in research in this area through the free use of quantum devices made by IBM.

The University of Naples Federico II is among the first Italian universities to enjoy this privilege. University Rector Matteo Lorito said he was particularly pleased with this important achievement. An active and fundamental role in reaching this agreement was played by IBM Italy and, in particular, by Federico Mattei, Michele Grossi and the IBM Quantum Academic Partnerships team. In the context of these activities, Professor Acampora has also designed the curriculum called"Intelligent Systems" belonging to the master's degree course in Data Science of the Department of Physics "Ettore Pancini" of the University of Naples Federico II, where students will be able to learn the details of quantum computing and artificial intelligence, qualifying themselves in the new professional figure of the expert and developer of Quantum AI methods and applications, one of the jobs that will be most in demand in the coming years. This is further evidence of how advanced the research and teaching activities in the field of artificial intelligence and quantum computing carried out at theUniversity of Naples Federico II are.