UD team's precocious paper takes first prize
in premier computer engineering competition

Quantum computing is a field that’s full of puzzling problems — challenges so big and so rich with potential that labs around the planet are scrambling to find workable solutions.

Thanks to University of Delaware scholars, more of those world-changing solutions are coming into focus.

For the third time in five years, Blue Hens have won a top prize publishing and presenting their quantum computing work in conferences, boosting UD’s quest to stay on the cutting edge of high-tech progress.

The latest accomplishment came at IEEE Quantum Week, one of the premier gatherings of quantum computing scholars, hosted each year by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Challenged to solve a problem that remains elusive to computer engineers worldwide, the UD team turned in a paper that was judged best in category, thanks to its novel approach and its potential for optimizing precious computer resources.

The first-place paper in the “quantum applications” track of the competition took more than a year and a half of work by its authors: Bao Bach, a doctoral student in quantum science and engineering, who was lead author; Jose Falla, doctoral student in physics; and Ilya Safro, associate professor and associate chair in graduate studies in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences.

Together, they presented their research at the fall conference in Montreal, Quebec, showing a new way to combine “classical” supercomputers with quantum machines to solve “optimization” problems more quickly and potentially with less energy. Bach came up with a framework that made it possible to break the problem down into smaller components, and Falla used quantum computers enhanced by machine learning to accelerate the solutions to these bite-sized problems.

Their collaborative approach impressed the judges, who saw the UD paper as an effective way to “scale up” solutions performed by a hybrid quantum-classical computer.

“What we demonstrate in our paper is that our framework is scalable enough to consider even larger problems, now and in the future,” Safro said. “This is very important. One of the greatest challenges in computer science is developing robust, scalable solutions that address complex, real-world applications across diverse fields, from AI to bioinformatics and finance, reminding us that impactful innovation requires both depth of thought and breadth of applicability.” 

For Bach, the award adds to an already impressive UD resume, especially for a student barely out of his first year of doctoral studies — he also was on the first-place team that cracked a quantum computing puzzle last year at the Big Q Quantum hackathon in Chicago. Graduate students from Safro’s lab have previously won best-paper awards at high-performance computing gatherings, in 2019 and 2022.

“This challenge was very interesting, because of the scalability problem,” said Bach, who moved to Newark from Vietnam to take part in UD’s quantum science and engineering graduate program, one of just a handful in the nation offering both a master’s and a Ph.D. degree. 

“Instead of just changing the hardware, we tried to develop the algorithm such that it’s scalable with current hardware, and scalable in the future as the size of the hardware grows bigger,” Bach added. “It’s not an easy task, because we have to take into account many constraints and difficulties about how to break down the problem so that we can solve it.”

Ultimately, the team’s solution shows a pathway to solving bigger problems in a time frame typically associated with smaller problems, while also giving a better answer than classical computers. 

Integrating machine learning with quantum computing, the work done by Falla, offers a promising approach to enhance quantum algorithm efficiency and optimize resource management. This integration accelerates quantum advancements by refining processes that are crucial to scaling and stabilizing quantum systems.

“It’s all done with a vision that down the road the quantum computers that are able to solve these small problems will be better for certain types of problems than the classical computers in several aspects, including energy efficiency,” Safro said. "If today we can successfully compete with the classical computers, then in the next stage of development of more robust quantum technologies, we will be essentially better.”

For Bach, the award is also an affirmation that he is on the right track with his graduate research, which also focuses on these puzzling optimization problems.

“I think this award is even bigger than the one I won in Chicago because there were a lot of great people and a lot of good Ph.D. students who also submitted papers,” he said. “It also acknowledged the work our team has been doing, and that the path that we are choosing is correct. It’s a good sign we should continue following this path.” 

The award also gives Bach another crucial credential needed to excel in quantum computing’s fast-growing job market. “Companies, national labs and universities are looking for graduates with awards like this. It’s a big deal,” Safro said.