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Published on Wednesday, May 11, 2022

Previous finalists have built exciting technologies across a wide range of industries representative of the core strengths of the University and its partners. (Image: iStock.com/AntonioSolano)

Four teams have been selected as finalists for the George Shultz Innovation Fund spring 2022 investment cycle bringing to the forefront solutions for scaling quantum computers, sustainably cleaning oil spills, detecting cancer with saliva, and improving medical devices.

Managed by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the George Shultz Innovation Fund provides up to $250,000 in co-investment funding for early-stage tech ventures coming out of the University of Chicago,Argonne National Laboratory,Fermilab, andtheMarine Biological Laboratory.

>> Register to attend the virtual Innovation Fund Finals on May 25th.

Through the Innovation Funds programmatic scope, we are able to surround these tech startups with a community of support including distinguished angel and venture capital investors, potential customers, advisors, scientists, entrepreneurs, and industry partners to help move their projects forward, said Ozge Guney Altay, director of Polsky Science Ventures.

The startups we invest in go through a rigorous, venture-capital-style due diligence conducted by a multi-disciplinary team of Innovation Fund Associates, added Altay. Our core mission with the Innovation Fund is to help researchers turn their innovations into ventures that are positioned to succeed in their fund-raising efforts.

The spring 2022 finalists include:

The core mission of the Shultz Innovation Fund is to help researchers turn their innovations into ventures that advance cutting-edge technologies, generate significant financial returns, and create lasting impact for humankind.

The teams receive guidance and dedicated support from the Polsky Center, business experts, an advisory committee, and studentInnovation Fund Associateswho are training in venture capitalism.

Over the last 11 years, the George Shultz Innovation Fund has invested $9.2 million in 90 companies that have gone on to raise $235 million in follow-on funding. Companies launched with the funds support includeExplORer Surgical,Corvidia,ClostraBio, andSuper.Tech.

Discussions with the Innovation Fund leadership and associates helped us clarify our core strategy and business model. We also benefited from the training and support on crafting a pitch deck, which will help us in conversations with future investors as well, said Pranav Gokhale, CEO and cofounder of Super.tech. Building on its success after securing $150,000 from the Innovation Fund in 2020, Super.tech went on to securemillions of dollars in federal research and was recently acquired by the global quantum ecosystem leader,ColdQuanta. Major organizations, including Fortune 500 companies and national research laboratories, today relay on its software as part of their strategic quantum initiatives.

A finalist in the 2021 spring cohort, Esya Labs CEO and Cofounder Dhivya Venkat said: All startups at the University of Chicago should apply to go through the George Shultz Innovation Fund. It was such a beneficial experience. Esya Labs earlier this yearannouncedthat Novartis is among the first companies to use its technology.

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Cancer Detection, Oil Spill Cleanup, Quantum Computing, and a New Medical Device: Meet the Spring 2022 Innovation Fund Finalists - Polsky Center for...

May 17, 2022 Tyndall National Institute and the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) are delighted to announce today the appointment of Dr. Venkatesh Kannan as Academic Associate at Tyndall to foster closer collaboration and drive mutually beneficial opportunities for the two organizations.

Tyndall National Institute, hosted at UCC, is a leading European research center in integrated ICT (Information and Communications Technology) hardware and systems. The Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC), hosted at NUI Galway, has a mandate from the State to develop and offer computing and data management platforms and services to drive and support research and innovation in academia, enterprise and public sector organizations.

Dr Kannan is Centre Technical Manager at ICHEC, with responsibility for defining and implementing the technological vision, strategy and roadmap of the Centres R&D activities. As an Academic Associate at Tyndall, he will be responsible for pursuing synergies for both organizations through project development, collaborative research and targeting national and European funding opportunities and programs.

Commenting on the appointment and the links between Tyndall and ICHEC, Professor William Scanlon, CEO, Tyndall said, A warm welcome to Dr. Venkatesh Kannan. His appointment builds on a long-standing collaboration between ICHEC and Tyndall in applications of HPC in physical models and materials discovery. We look forward to deepening and broadening our working together. Our growing partnership will unlock opportunities to address a whole new set of grand challenges bridging deep-tech and digital technologies including the Quantum Internet and Artificial Intelligence for better health and environment and for greener energy and resources.

Congratulating Dr Kannan on his appointment, Prof. J-C Desplat, Director, ICHEC said,

We congratulate Dr Kannan whole-heartedly on this well-deserved recognition. We look forward to bridging the deep-tech R&D at Tyndall with the high-performance data and compute R&D at ICHEC to build smart scalable digital technology platforms and solutions targeting key domains, particularly environmental/climate security, renewable energy systems, precision health and emerging next-gen digital technologies for the benefit of all.

A closer partnership between ICHEC and the Tyndall National Institute will drive the following areas through National and EU activities:

Source: Tyndall National Institute

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Tyndall and ICHEC to Foster Further Collaboration Following Appointment of Academic Associate - HPCwire

Levy flights describe statistical properties of elementary quantum magnets as well as of bees foraging for food. Credit: Christoph Hohmann (MCQST Cluster)

At first glance, a system consisting of 51 ions may appear to be easily manageable. But even if these charged atoms are only switched back and forth between two states, the result is more than two quadrillion (1015) different orderings which the system can take on.

The behavior of such a system is practically impossible to calculate with conventional computers, especially since an excitation introduced to the system can propagate erratically. The excitation follows a statistical pattern known as a Lvy Flight.

One characteristic of such movements is that, in addition to the smaller jumps which are to be expected, significantly larger jumps also sometimes take place. This phenomenon can also be observed in the flights of bees and in unusual fierce movements in the stock market.

While simulating the dynamics of a complex quantum system is a very tall order for even traditional super computers, the task is childs play for quantum simulators. But how can the results of a quantum simulator be verified without the ability to perform the same calculations it can?

Observation of quantum systems indicated that it might be possible to represent at least the long-term behavior of such systems with equations like the ones the Bernoulli brothers developed in the 18th century to describe the behavior of fluids.

In order to test this hypothesis, the authors used a quantum system which simulates the dynamics of quantum magnets. They were able to use it to prove that, after an initial phase dominated by quantum-mechanical effects, the system could actually be described with equations of the type familiar from fluid dynamics.

Furthermore, they showed that the same Lvy Flight statistics which describe the search strategies used by bees also apply to fluid-dynamic processes in quantum systems.

The quantum simulator was built at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at The University of Innsbruck Campus. Our system effectively simulates a quantum magnet by representing the north and south poles of a molecular magnet using two energy levels of the ions, says IQOQI Innsbruck scientist Manoj Joshi.

Our greatest technical advance was the fact that we succeeded in individually addressing each one of the 51 ions individually, observes Manoj Joshi. As a result we were able to investigate the dynamics of any desired number of initial states, which was necessary in order to illustrate the emergence of the fluid dynamics.

While the number of qubits and the stability of the quantum states is currently very limited, there are questions for which we can already use the enormous computing power of quantum simulators today, says Michael Knap, Professor for Collective Quantum Dynamics at the Technical University of Munich.

In the near future, quantum simulators and quantum computers will be ideal platforms for researching the dynamics of complex quantum systems, explains Michael Knap. Now we know that after a certain point in time these systems follow the laws of classic fluid dynamics. Any strong deviations from that are an indication that the simulator isnt working properly.

Reference: Observing emergent hydrodynamics in a long-range quantum magnet by M. K. JoshiF. Kranzl, A. Schuckert, I. Lovas, C. MaierR. Blatt, M. Knap and C. F. Roos, 12 May 2022, Science.DOI: 10.1126/science.abk2400

The research activities were subsidized by the European Community as part of the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program and the European Research Council (ERC); by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the Excellence Cluster Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology (MCQST); and by the Technical University of Munich through the Institute for Advanced Study, which is supported by funding from the German Excellence Initiative and the European Union. Additional support was provided by the Max Planck Society (MPG) under the auspices of the International Max Planck Research School for Quantum Science and Technology (IMPRS-QST); by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the Federation of Austrian Industries Tyrol.

Authors Prof. Michael Knap (TU Munich) and Prof. Rainer Blatt (University of Innsbruck) are active in Munich Quantum Valley, an initiative with the objective of establishing a Center for Quantum Computing and Quantum Technology (ZQQ) over the next five years. Here three quantum computers are to be built based on superconducting qubits as well as qubits from ions and atoms. Members of the Munich Quantum Valley e.V. association include the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BAdW), Fraunhofer (FhG), the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Friedrich-Alexander-Universitt Erlangen-Nrnberg (FAU), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt Munich (LMU), Max Planck Society (MPG) and die Technical University of Munich (TUM).

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Dynamics of Complex Quantum Systems and the Flight of the Bee - SciTechDaily

A team from the U.S. military that included Gabriel Camarillo, under secretary of the Army, learned how shrimp, ants and quantum computing could improve military operations and technology during a tour of three Duke University research labs Monday.

Camarillo spent the afternoon getting briefed by Duke faculty members leading projects funded by the Army and other government agencies.

This research is absolutely critical to making the technological advances to develop war-fighting into the future, Camarillo said at the conclusion of his visit.

Jenny Lodge, Dukes vice president for research and innovation, said the tour highlighted the importance of Dukes partnerships with the Army and other agencies who see real-world applications in the science practiced every day in campus labs.

We dont want our research to just sit on shelves, Lodge said. We want it out in the world. These partnerships enable those translations to real-world uses.

Camarillos tour included stops in:

Its really hard to visualize the progress teams are making and potential future applications until you see the work, Camarillo said. Its also a chance to interact with the researchers and understand what the applications might be.

The visit Monday was the latest in a string of partnerships between Duke and the U.S. Army.

Last year, Duke entered an agreement with the Armys 18th Airborne Corps, based at Fort Bragg, N.C. to spur innovation by bringing military situations into the university research lab.

That partnership created Soldier-Academic Innovation Teams to collaborate on problems of interest to both the Army and Duke researchers. The agreement similar to those the Army has with other universities is intended to spur innovation in the military and increase research and learning opportunities at Duke.

That agreement, in turn, built on Army-Duke collaborations already underway, where Duke scholars helped develop solutions to real-world problems faced by the military.

In one exercise, for example, Duke students worked with officials at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro streamline the planning and logistics of reservist training weekends through the design of software programs.

Camarillos visit to Duke also included a visit with recently retired mens basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski. Camarillo presented a statue to Krzyzewski a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy who also coached the Army basketball team for five seasons prior to taking over the Duke program in 1980

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Pentagon Leaders Get Briefed on Innovative Duke Research - Duke Today

TEL AVIV, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Classiq, the leader in quantum computing software, today announced the Classiq Coding Competition, rewarding those that create highly-efficient quantum circuits to solve important real-world problems. The Classiq Coding Competition is the first competition focused on quantum efficiency. Quantum computers have limited resources, so building compact, optimized solutions that can make maximum use of those resources is critical.

Creating efficient quantum algorithms is part engineering, part art. The Classiq Coding Competition is a call to the worlds quantum software community to showcase their talents and demonstrate how quantum computing can take humans to new heights, said Classiq CEO Nir Minerbi. Efficient circuits enhance the ability of any quantum computer to solve important problems.

The Classiq Coding Competition will consist of four problems and will award 17 cash prizes totaling $25,000. The top entry for each of the four problems will receive $3,000, while $1,500 and $500 will be awarded for the second and third places in each problem. Classiq will also award several $1,000 prizes to creators of the best innovative solutions as well as to the most promising youth participants under the age of 18. In addition, first-place winners will be profiled in The Quantum Insider.

A panel of esteemed judges will determine the winners. The judges are:

For some problems, the winning entries will be those that create a working circuit with the fewest two-qubit gates, while others will seek to minimize the circuit depth. Classiq will reveal the Classiq Coding Competition winners in mid-June.

You would be surprised how much can be achieved with compact, efficient circuits, said Minerbi. The onboard computer used in the Apollo 11 space mission got a man to the moon using just 72 kilobytes of ROM. Quantum computing is taking off, and the need to create elegant and efficient quantum algorithms will exist for years to come. Organizations that manage to fit larger problems into available computers will reap their quantum benefits sooner than others. The Classiq Coding Competition will encourage the creativity and ingenuity required to make this happen and highlight the art of the possible in compact, efficient circuits.

The Classiq Coding Competition is open to all parties worldwide, except Classiq employees and their families. Click here to learn about and register for the Classiq Coding Competition.

About Classiq

Classiq is the leader in quantum computing software, provides a development platform built for organizations that want to jumpstart and accelerate their quantum computing programs. Classiqs patented CAD for quantum software engine automatically converts high-level functional models into optimized, hardware-aware circuits. Customers use the Classiq platform to build sophisticated algorithms that could not otherwise be created, bypassing the need to work at the quantum assembly level. Backed by powerful investors such as HPE, HSBC, Samsung NEXT, NTT and others, Classiq has raised more than $50 million since its 2020 inception, built a world-class team of scientists and engineers, and distilled decades of their quantum expertise into its groundbreaking platform. With Classiq, customers can push the envelope of whats possible in quantum software, build valuable IP blocks, explore quantum solutions for real-life problems, and prepare to take full advantage of the coming quantum computing revolution. To learn more, follow Classiq on LinkedIn, Twitter or YouTube or visit http://www.classiq.io.

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Classiq Announces the Classiq Coding Competition a $25K Challenge to Encourage Innovation and Build the World's Best Quantum Circuits - Business Wire