Quantum heuristics for hard optimisation problems

3^rd March 2026, 13:00 Ashton Lecture Theatre
Ieva Čepaitė
Phasecraft, London

Abstract

A potential near-term application of quantum computers is that of solving hard combinatorial optimisation problems. In this talk, I will introduce the basics of quantum computing, the combinatorial problem structures which are amenable to being solved by quantum methods, as well as delving into some of the algorithms and approaches that have been explored for solving them. If I have time, I will hopefully talk about some of our recent work on quantum-enhanced methods for optimisation. More concretely, I will cover the quadratic unconstrained binary optimisation (QUBO) problem model, which describes many NP-hard problem instances (in particular graph-based problems), quantum adiabatic dynamics and quantum annealing, as well as the quantum approximate optimisation algorithm (QAOA). I will aim to make the talk as accessible as possible to those who have never encountered quantum computing or much combinatorial optimisation in the past.

Biography

Ieva is a Quantum Algorithms Researcher at a UK-based quantum computing startup called Phasecraft. Her background is a combination of Computer Science and Physics (BSc/MSc Computational Physics from University of Edinburgh and PhD in Physics from University of Strathclyde). She enjoys communicating her research and therefore hopes that her talk will be enjoyable and informative for anyone interested in quantum computing and its applications.

Additional Materials

• https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.16309