Once a year, the LMU mathematics, physics and computer science department evaluates among the students which lecturers and which tutors have shown outstanding commitment to teaching. The “Golden Sommerfeld” for the physics department has already been awarded since 2017. In 2022, the “Golden Carathéodory for the Department of Mathematics and the “Teaching Award of Computer Science” are being introduced. The aim is to honor outstanding courses and tutorials and to indicate them as a good example.

On Thursday, January 12th, 2023, Prof. Dr. Linnhoff-Popien was awarded the “Teaching Prize of Computer Science 2022” for the “Best Bachelor Lecture”. Nearly 10,000 students of the group Active Student Bodies Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science from the last winter semester 2021/2022 and summer semester 2022 voted and agreed: Prof. Dr. Linnhoff-Popien’s lecture “Computer Architecture” was particularly outstanding.

What characterizes a good course? Prof. Dr. Linnhoff-Popien was asked directly about her teaching in the summer semester 2022 and she reports as follows:
“It was April 2022, a tumultuous time regarding Corona, and there we were expecting 700 to 800 students from 16 different study paths, who enrolled in the computer architecture course. The booked lecture hall had 600 seats. At that time, I had met both students who craved face-to-face lectures and students who had family members who belonged to risk groups and were strongly advised to avoid close contact. For these scenarios, we created a flexible lecture concept accordingly, and the following three aspects were important to me:

WHAT – According to the curriculum, only classical computers and computing methods are taught in computer architecture. In addition to the classical approaches, I included an introduction to quantum computing (QC) as an optional compulsory module. Those who wanted to learn QC could do an exercise on it in the exam. Those who had no interest in QC alternatively programmed assembler as an exam task. Remarkable 96% of the students studied QC additively to the classical material.

HOW? – I put great importance on keeping the lecture clearly structured and easy to understand. Afterwards, each student had the opportunity to intensify the lecture content in tutorials, in which exemplary exercises were calculated. Then they could prove their knowledge by calculating and presenting weekly exercise sheets in order to receive bonus points. Our team of 11 tutorials corrected an average of 1,800 exercises per week. Hundreds of exams were corrected within 48 hours after they were written. My big thanks go to the incredible team of three teaching assistants and practice guides who were very engaged in providing individual attention to each student and answering each question that comes up one at a time.”

The award certificate recognizes the lecture as follows:
“Best Bachelor Lecture – Computer Architecture (Summer Semester 2022) – Prof. Linnhoff-Popien – In the evaluation, the best Bachelor lecture was characterized by its passionate and sympathetic communication of complex topics. The lecture was praised as well structured and well arranged. Some students described the lecture as the best of their lives.

Link:
https://gaf.fs.lmu.de/lehrpreise/lehrpreisinfo

The joy of the award winners last Thursday was very great and the mood exuberant. We can be curious which lectures will be nominated next year by the body of a department of mathematics, physics and computer science of the LMU.

On September 20^th and 21^st, 2022, the leaders of quantum computing in Germany will meet in Munich for a network meeting initiated by QuCUN with other projects which are funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

The group of participants will be project partners from the two funding measures “Application Network for Quantum Computing” and “Quantum Informatics: Algorithms, Software, Applications“.

Both days will be filled with presentations on quantum computing from the different projects. In addition, there will be a networking evening on the first day of the event to give the invited project partners and representatives of the project sponsor VDI the opportunity for personal networking.

For more information on QuCUN, please visit www.qucun.de.

(July 24, 2022/Munich) “When the quantum advantage is achieved, the technology will disruptively change the market“, commented Claudia Linnhoff-Popien, head of QAR-Lab at LMU Munich. Completely new approaches would be possible in material research, logistics, medical technology and the training of neural networks.

As a consequence, „the German economy has to prepare for the age of quantum computing”, says Claudia Linnhoff-Popien.
For this purpose the project QuCUN was founded: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, in collaboration with its spin-off Aqarios and with BASF and SAP, is developing a platform that will become a central hub for companies working on quantum computers.

Read more about quantum technology in Germany in the Handelsblatt article:
www.handelsblatt.com/quantentechnologie

For more information on the QuCUN project, please visit: www.qucun.de

What are the advantages of quantum computing? Where are we today and what opportunities and challenges does this create? In which sectors can this pioneering technology open up new perspectives?
The white paper “Quantum Computing in Bavaria – Ways from Research to Application”, published by Bayern Innovativ and the QAR-Lab, aims to raise awareness of the range of possible applications of quantum computing and to inform potential quantum users what opportunities the field of quantum technology opens up for them.

Another day full of appointments. And of course you want to be on time. But rush hour traffic, as always, lets start the morning with a stress test of the nerves. According to the “stop and go” principle, you torture yourself with your vehicle from traffic light to traffic light. Passing road works, lane narrowing and overloaded crossings. You wonder if traffic flow through the city couldn’t be managed more smartly – but you also recognize that traffic planning professionals face an almost superhuman challenge to the complexity of urban road networks. Is there a solution anyway? Yes, in the near future. Quantum computing makes it possible …

Today, quantum computing (QC) is the topic of conversation wherever high-performance computers are involved – especially since the Bavarian Minister President Markus Söder described the technology as a “warp drive for the research of the future” [1] and the Bavarian State Government provided a total funding program of 300 million euros for QuantumTech Vision Bayern in its Hightech Agenda Plus [2]. But even today, many people still have very diffuse ideas about how quantum computers work and its potential applications – and that includes business and industry, even though the new technology could revolutionize our world in the midterm in much the same way as Konrad Zuse’s “Z1” and today’s omnipresent personal computer.

(December 15, 2021/Munich) At today’s network conference with the topic “Quantum computing in practice: industry-specific use cases”, Dr. Sigrid Auweter from Smart Reporting GmbH and Leo Sünkel from QAR-Lab were guests at Bayern Innovativ. The use of AI and quantum computing creates new possibilities in a wide variety of application areas – including the medical field. Smart Reporting GmbH has the goal of optimizing radiological diagnostic procedures and their reporting. For this purpose, Smart Reporting GmbH, together with the Fraunhofer Institute and the QAR-Lab of LMU Munich, are working on the use case “QKI-supported diagnosis of COVID-19 in radiology images” as part of the PlanQK project. The basic idea is to use quantum computing to analyze radiological diagnostic data and images of the lungs and surrounding organs in relation to the diagnosis of Covid-19.

The goal of this use case is to automatically classify lung CT images into three categories: Healthy, COVID 19 pneumonia, and other diagnosis. In addition, the severity in COVID19 pneumonia is determined, i.e., how intensely the lungs have been attacked by COVID19. Based on this, the best treatment option for the patient should subsequently be derived. With the help of Quantum Machine Learning, the entire process will be optimized.

(Darmstadt und Munich – Germany, December 9, 2021)
Merck, a leading science and technology company, today announced its membership of the research project BAIQO (Bayesian Network Analysis and Inference via Quantum-assisted Optimization), which is being funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). This three-year project will be carried out in collaboration with the Quantum Applications & Research Laboratory (QAR-Lab) at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich (LMU), Germany. This research project focuses on creating a basis for the use of quantum computing in the modeling of clinical studies. Together, the partners will investigate the potentials of various quantum algorithms for optimizing models generated with the aid of machine learning from large data sets.

“The algorithms are to be integrated into our existing optimization platform and investigated. Together, we are approaching the topic of how drug candidates can move through clinical development more purposefully, more quickly, more safely, and of course, more sustainably,” said Thomas Ehmer, project manager on the Merck side. “Of course, BAIQO offers the potential for new innovative jobs in this technology field.”

Informatics Professor and Institute Chair Claudia Linnhoff-Popien, who heads the QAR-Lab at LMU, is convinced by the BAIQO project: “We at the QAR-Lab see enormous application potential for quantum computing in the optimization of clinical trials. With our many years of expertise in the areas of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, we want to support Merck in the development and implementation of beneficial algorithms.”

Machine-derived models for clinical studies (known as Bayesian models) are often highly complex, with a very large number of variables and dependencies between those variables. The research partners want to evaluate the extent to which these kinds of models can generally be translated into optimization problems to define the best possible parameter distribution for modeling successful clinical trials.

A further question that the BAIQO project aims to answer is the extent to which different kinds of quantum algorithms can be applied under the existing limitations of current quantum computing hardware, i.e. so-called NISQ devices (NISQ: noisy intermediate-scale quantum). The evaluation of currently available NISQ devices will also clarify whether a “quantum advantage” exists compared with classic approaches for optimizing clinical trials.

The BMBF will fund 73.3% of the € 1.5 million project volume via the “Application Network for Quantum Computing” funding announcement, a measure for implementing the government program “Quantum Technologies – From basic research to market”.

On December 15, our partner Bayern Innovativ will bring together experts to promote an exchange of knowledge in the field of quantum computing. Branch-specific use cases are to show in which areas the technology can be applied. QAR-Lab will also present a use case with one of its partners, the Smart Reporting GmbH.

Smart Reporting GmbH has recently developed SmartCAD | COVID-19, a system for AI-supported radiological diagnosis and standardized reporting of COVID-19. This system can be significantly improved with methods of QKI and will be additionally supplemented with a QKI-based decision support in the PlanQK project.

The presentation “QKI-supported diagnosis of COVID-19 in radiology images” by Leo Sünkel – PhD student at the Chair of Mobile and Distributed Systems of the QAR Lab, LMU Munich – and by Dr. Sigrid Auweter – VP Research & Innovation, Smart Reporting GmbH, Munich – can be auditioned at 11:10 a.m..