Fraunhofer ITWM joins the QCI Quant²AI project as an industrial partner

4. July 2023

Our QCI application project Quant²AI has found an industrial partner for benchmarking quantum AIs: The Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM will support the DLR research team led by project manager Hans-Martin Rieser to make the complete end-to-end pipeline of quantum AIs comparable, quantify any quantum advantages over classical methods and develop a demonstrator. In doing so, Fraunhofer ITWM will also contribute to Quant²AI’s goal to initiate standardisation in the quantum AI environment. CONET Solutions, JoS QUANTUM and Data Cybernetics are also joining the project as subcontractors.

The collaboration between Fraunhofer ITWM and Quant²AI will benefit, among other things, all of our application projects that use quantum AI. As part of the DLR QCI Quantum Fellowship Programme, a doctoral student is also working on the coding of classical data on the quantum computers. The research results can flow into the preprocessing steps of Quant²AI in the future.

“Our industry partners bring a unique combination of academic and industrial experience. This allows five different perspectives on quantum computing, artificial intelligence and data to come together in Quant²AI.”

Quant²AI project manager Hans-Martin Rieser, DLR Institute for AI safety and security

Benefits for research, industry and the ecosystem

Quant²AI project manager Hans-Martin Rieser (Back row, second from left) at the kick-off with the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM and subcontractors

Although interest in AI methods on quantum hardware for practical applications is steadily increasing, the appropriate algorithms are still in their infancy. Feasibility studies have so far not been able to demonstrate significant advantages offered by quantum systems beyond specialised constructed problems. With Quant²AI, we want to evaluate the possible advantages of quantum AI systems heuristically using a reproducible method of comparison. This benchmark would enable developers to test their methods in a standardised way and helps users to identify suitable algorithms for their field of application.

DLR and the industry partners gain new insights and experience from this collaboration for the future industrial use of quantum machine learning. The companies will also be equipped to market new products and services based on the research results. This will provide industry, business and research with access to quantum-accelerated computing methods.