Dr. Giulio Chiribella joined in August 2015 as an associate professor at the Department of Computer Science of The University of Hong Kong. A physicist by training, he obtained his PhD in 2007 from the University of Pavia, Italy, and conducted postdoctoral research at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Canada. Before joining the University of Hong Kong, Dr. Chiribella served as associate professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, where he was enrolled in 2012 as a member of the Young 1000 Talents Program of China. In 2010 he was awarded the Hermann Weyl Prize. Currently, he is member of the Standing Committee of the International Colloquia on Group Theoretical Methods in Physics (ICGTMP), Visiting Fellow of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and Member of the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi). His research interests are in quantum information and computation, in the development of quantum technologies, and in the foundations of quantum mechanics.
Research interests and expectations:
Dr. Chiribella’s research area is quantum information science, an interdisciplinary field that joins researchers across engineering, physics, and mathematics.
In this field, Dr. Chiribella is exploring how information can be manipulated at the microscopic scale governed by quantum mechanics---the scale of atoms, molecules, and elementary particles. The goal is to develop a new information technology that takes advantage of quantum principles to boost the performances of computers and communication systems. This is, of course, a challenging goal, but progress is fast and the payoff is high. For example, a celebrated result by Peter Shor shows that a quantum computer will be able to factor large numbers exponentially faster than any present-day classical computer. Many other speedups have been discovered over the past three decades, showing that quantum computers have a great potential for a variety of applications, ranging from search engines to the simulation of complex systems.
What Dr. Chiribella finds exciting is the interplay between information and fundamental physics: ultimately, the speedups of quantum computers are not just a matter of technology, but they are clues that help us understanding how nature works at the most fundamental level. In a way, studying the ultimate performances of computers and communication systems nowadays is similar to what it would have been studying the efficiency limits of steam engines in the 19th century---a stimulating engineering problem that leads to new concepts and methods in physics.
Exploring the optimal performances of quantum machines is an important component of Dr. Chiribella’s work. In the past, Dr. Chiribella has been studying the precision of microscopic clocks and gyroscopes, the performances of machines that copy information at the quantum scale, and the benchmarks that can be used to certify the advantages of quantum information processing in realistic experiments. Currently, Dr. Chiribella is interested in understanding what are the physical resources needed for quantum computation and what is the most efficient way to use them.
In joining HKU, Dr. Chiribella is thrilled by the opportunity to build a new interdisciplinary group working at the interface between computer science and physics. In the next semester, he will start teaching a new course on Quantum Information and Computation, where Dr. Chiribella looks forward to meet many of the bright students of our university. In the long term, Dr. Chiribella plans to do his best to contribute to the development of the quantum information area in Hong Kong, joining forces with colleagues from HKU and from the other local universities.