22nd July 2024
LMH Glasstone Research Fellow and Associate Professor in Quantum Information Theory Dr Bálint Koczor has been announced as one of 68 promising research leaders who will receive £104 million in funding to lead research into global issues and commercialise their innovations in the UK.
The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)’s Future Leaders Fellowships (FLF) seek to enable universities and businesses to develop their most talented early career researchers and innovators, by providing them with long-term support and funding.
Dr Koczor’s research includes quantum theory and in theory of (near-term) quantum computers, with a view to making quantum computers practical.
This includes developing new and improved ways to deal with errors (error mitigation techniques) in quantum computers. Dr Koczor’s research also aims to exploit classical supercomputers to squeeze out as much performance from quantum computers as possible. He works with experimentalists and with quantum companies to develop optimised platforms to best tailor quantum applications to hardware.
Dr Koczor is looking forward to using the FLF funding to advance his research, saying: “The Future Leaders Fellowship is an excellent and unique opportunity to provide me with long-term funding to establish a world-leading group that specialises in the theory for quantum computers. The ultimate goal is to achieve practical quantum advantage, which is the point at which a quantum computer can perform useful tasks for those who are not specialists, for example, a chemist may use a quantum computer to simulate properties of a molecule in order to forgo expensive laboratory synthesis.”