Abstract: Quantum computers are designed to outperform standard computers by running quantum algorithms. Areas in which quantum algorithms can be applied include cryptography, search and optimisation, simulation of quantum systems and solving large systems of linear equations. Prof. Montanaro will briefly present some known quantum algorithms, with an emphasis on their applications. He will also discuss recent developments and near-term applications of quantum algorithms.

Short bio: Professor Ashley Montanaro, Professor of Quantum Computation in the School of Mathematics at the University of Bristol, member of the Quantum Information Theory and Theory and Algorithms research groups.

Prof. Montanaro has worked in the field of quantum computing for 17 years, specialising in quantum algorithms and quantum computational complexity, and has published over 50 papers on this topic. He holds a PhD in quantum computing from the University of Bristol, supervised by Prof. Richard Jozsa. Ashley has been a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge. He held an EPSRC Early Career Research Fellowship from 2014 to 2019 and was awarded a Whitehead Prize in 2017 by the London Mathematical Society. He has served on the Steering Committee of the international conference on Quantum Information Processing (QIP), and as a Founding Editor of the journal Quantum.

Prof. Montanaro is also the co-founder of Phasecraft, a quantum software startup whose goal is to get the most out of near-term quantum computing hardware. Phasecraft collaborates with leading quantum hardware companies, including Google and Rigetti, and with academic and industry leaders to develop high-efficiency software that evolves quantum computing from experimental demonstrations to useful applications.