Saturday 25
09:00 – 09:05: Opening Remarks
09:05 – 10:00: Invited Talk: QAOA with Bayesian adaptive techniques on a Rydberg atom platform – Elisa Ercolessi (University of Bologna)
Session 1: Quantum Machine Learning Foundations & Architctures
10:0 – 10:15: Qubit-Wise Architecture Search Method for Variational Quantum Circuits. Ke Xu, Jialin Chen, Di Wu, Fan Zhang, Wei Cao and Lingli Wang
10:15 – 10:30: Embedding-Aware Quantum-Classical SVMs for Scalable Quantum Machine Learning. Sebastián Cajas, Luis Fernando Torres Torres, Mario Bifulco, Carlos Andrés Duran, Cristian Bosch and Ricardo Simón Carbajo
10:30 – 11:00: COFFEE BREAK
11:00 – 11:15: The Effects of Conditional Pooling Techniques in Quanvolutional Circuits of Quantum-Classical Hybrid Neural Networks. Robin Faier, Jeanette Miriam Lorenz and Hans Ehm
11:15 – 11:30: Triplet Loss Based Quantum Encoding for Class Separability. Marco Mordacci, Mahul Pandey, Paolo Santini and Michele Amoretti
11:30 – 11:45: QSpark : Towards Reliable Qiskit Code Generation. Kiana Kheiri, Aamna Aamir, Andriy Miranskyy and Chen Ding
11:45 – 11:55: Dimensionality reduction for SWAP-Test. Filippo Orazi and Johannes Knörzer
11:55 – 12:05: Quantum Machine Learning on the Photonic Platform. Denis Stanev, Nicolò Spagnolo and Fabio Sciarrino
Session 2: Quantum Machine Learning for Real-World Applications
12:05 – 12:15: Summary of: Solving Industrial Fault Diagnosis Problems with Quantum Computers. Alexander Diedrich, Stefan Windmann and Oliver Niggemann
12:15 – 12:30: Leveraging Triplet Autoencoders with Quantum Tensor Networks for Multiclass Image Classification. Vito Nicola Losavio, Maria Grazia Miccoli, Donato Malerba and Corrado Loglisci
12:30 – 14:00 LUNCH
14:00 – 14:15: Quantum Autoencoder-Based Anomaly Detection for Cyberattacks in Smart Power Systems. Franco Cirillo and Christian Esposito
14:15 – 14:30: Quantum Federated Learning for Noisy and Imbalanced State Discrimination. Rocco Ballester, Christian Blum, Jesus Cerquides and Luis Artiles
14:30 – 14:40: Novel Approach to Multivariate Forecasting with Quantum Reservoirs. Jesús Bonilla, Diego Alberto Aranda, Elías Fernández-Combarro, Nerea Monrió, Sandra Ranilla-Cortina, Jose Ranilla and Jorge Ballesteros
14:40 – 14:55: Toward Quantum Social Robotics: A Hybrid Architecture for Emotion and Coping Management. Barbara Castrignano, Berardina Nadja De Carolis, Andrea Fiore, Maria Grazia Miccoli, Marco Romei Longhena, Vito Nicola Losavio and Giuseppe Palestra
14:55 – 15:10: Incorporating Content-based Features into Quantum Knowledge Graph Embeddings. Jonas Hendl and Michael Färber
Session 3: Quantum Systems, Noise & Control
15:10 – 15:20: Detection of noise correlations in two qubit systems by Machine Learning. Dario Fasone, Shreyasi Mukherjee, Dario Penna, Fabio Cirinnà, Mauro Paternostro, Elisabetta Paladino, Giuseppe Falci and Luigi Giannelli
15:20 – 15:30: Machine Learning-aided Optimal Control of a qubit subjected to external noise. Riccardo Cantone, Shreyasi Mukherjee, Luigi Giannelli, Elisabetta Paladino and Giuseppe A. Falci
15:30 – 16:00 COFFEE BREAK
16:00 – 16:15: Detecting Gaussianity in open quantum systems with Machine Learning. Shreyasi Mukherjee, Luigi Giannelli, Dario Penna, Fabio Cirinnà, Elisabetta Paladino and Giuseppe A. Falci
Session 4: Quantum Optimization & Decision Making
16:15 – 16:30: Freeze and Conquer: Reusable Ansatz for Solving the Traveling Salesman Problem. Fabrizio Fagiolo and Nicolò Vescera
16:30 – 16:45: Optimization of Beam Systems Using QUBO Models and Annealing Techniques. Stefano Speziali, Andrea Marini, Alberto Garinei, Marcello Marconi and Emanuele Piccioni
16:45 – 17:00: A QUBO Approach to Value-Sensitive Reasoning in Argumentation Frameworks. Marco Baioletti, Francesco Santini and Fabio Rossi
17:00 – 17:15: QAOA for Efficient Urban Logistical Ecosystem. Fabio Picariello, Gloria Turati, Riccardo Antonelli, Igor Bailo, Susanna Bonura, Gianmarco Ciarfaglia, Salvatore Cipolla, Paolo Cremonesi, Maurizio Ferrari Dacrema, Michele Gabusi, Ivan Gentile, Vito Morreale and Antonio Noto
17:15 – 17:30: Scalable Quantum Optimisation using HADOF: Hamiltonian Auto-Decomposition Optimisation Framework. Namasi G. Sankar, Georgios Miliotis and Simon Caton
17:30 – 17:40: Concluding Remarks
Invited Talk
QAOA with Bayesian adaptive techniques on a Rydberg atom platform
Elisa Ercolessi – University of Bologna
Abstract: Quantum Computing is seen as a potential breakthrough for the study of hard classical problems as well as for quantum many-body systems. However, we are in the era of NISQ devices and are still far away from fault-tolerant machines. This leads us to consider the possibility of hybrid classical-quantum protocols of variational type: they exploit quantum resources to efficiently prepare states that depend on a suitably chosen set of variational parameters, which can then be determined by means of optimization algorithms to be run on a classical computer. The choice of such classical optimizer schemes is to be guided by compatibility requirements with respect to the current available quantum platforms. To evaluate the feasibility of such an approach, we present an application of the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm to the classical MIS problem on a graph implemented by means of emulations of the full protocol on classical hardware, as well as a case study that has been run on a real Rydberg atom quantum machine.
Bio: Elisa Ercolessi is Associate Professor of Theoretical Physics, Models and Mathematical Methods at the Department of Physics and Astronomy since 2005. After earning a degree in Physics from the University of Bologna, she obtained a Ph.D. in Physics from Syracuse University (NY, USA). Her research activity focuses on quantum statistical mechanics, in collaboration with various national and international research groups. She studies models of low-dimensional many-body systems that exhibit topological and exotic phases of matter, as well as quantum information and computation theory.
Since 2025 she is President of the Board of Directors of the Italian Quantum Alliance. Since 2024, she is also Director of AlmaQ (Center for Quantum Science and Technology, University of Bologna) as well as Member of the Executive Board of the Italian Society of Quantum Sciences and Technologies (SISTEQ).
The keynote is part of the dissemination activities related to the research conducted within the Spoke 1 of the PNRR-NQSTI.