András Gilyén has been selected as winner of the 2019 ERCIM Cor Baayen Young Researcher Award, together with CNRS researcher Ninon Burgos. The award committee lauds their outstanding scientific research quality and its impact on science. Gilyén performed his award winning PhD research at CWI, supervised by CWI researcher Ronald de Wolf. Both researchers will receive the award at the European Computer Science Summit (ECSS), on 29 October 2019.
András Gilyén is awarded for his work on quantum algorithms, and more generally the theoretical computer science (TCS) aspects of quantum computing. This interdisciplinary field combines physics, computer science, and mathematics. Gilyén developed a generic quantum algorithmic framework, called quantum singular value transformation, which unifies a large number of prominent quantum algorithms. These algorithms can be applied to a wide range of computational problems, e.g. performing machine learning tasks more efficiently, or understanding quantum mechanical properties of materials using quantum computers.
During his time as PhD researcher, András published his results at a number of prestigious conferences. Three papers were published at STOC and FOCS, which are the two most prestigious annual conferences in TCS, and one paper at SODA, which is the world's premier algorithms conference. Gilyén graduated on 29 May 2019, after which he continued his research as a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
The work of Gilyén has already been influential in the field of quantum computing. Other researchers have realized that Gilyén's framework is extremely versatile and powerful, and are seeking out his help to apply it to their own problems.
Gilyén shares the Cor Baayen Young Researcher Award with Ninon Burgos, researcher at ARAMIS Lab in Paris. Her research currently focuses on the development of computational imaging tools to improve the understanding and diagnosis of dementia.
The ERCIM Cor Baayen Young Researcher Award is named after Cor Baayen, who served as ERCIM's first president from 1991 to 1994, as well as and scientific director of CWI, from 1980 to 1994. Earlier this year, Baayen passed away at the age of 85.
