$2.1M DARPA Grant Puts Lehigh University Optimization Experts at Vanguard of Quantum Computing

(EurekaAlert) Lehigh University has won a $2.1M DARPA grant that put optimization experts at vanguard of quantum computing at work on optimization algorithms in quantum computing.
With support from a recently awarded $2,128,658 research grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), an international group led by industrial and systems engineering (ISE) faculty members Tamás Terlaky, Luis Zuluaga, and Boris Defourny will work on optimization algorithms in quantum computing.
“We want to explore the power of existing quantum computers, and those that are predicted to exist in the future,” says Terlaky, who is a member of the Quantum Computing and Optimization Lab (QCOL) in the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science. The lab was established in 2019 to accelerate the development of quantum computing optimization methodology, and associated faculty launched the university’s first quantum computing course this spring. “We’ll be looking at combinatorial optimization problems for quantum computing with the goal that, in four years, we’ll be able to demonstrate that quantum computers are surpassing the capabilities of classical computers, at least on some problems.”