Prof. Wim van Dam awarded NSF grant for quantum annealing project

Associate Professor Wim van Dam was awarded a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate the benefits of quantum annealing for solving computational problems. The project titled "Strengths and Weaknesses of Simulated Quantum Annealing" explores the extent to which quantum computers will outperform classical ones by comparing the capabilities of quantum algorithms to the power of the best possible classical algorithms. Outcomes of this research should clarify whether quantum computers are needed to achieve the performance of quantum annealing algorithms, or if this performance can be reproduced using classical simulations.