Dimitris G. Angelakis

Dimitris G. Angelakis is an Associate Professor at the School of Electronic and Computer Engineering at the Technical University of Crete and serves as Principal Investigator at the Centre for Quantum Technologies. His research group investigates quantum optical implementations of quantum computation and simulation, bridging theory with experiments across multiple quantum platforms including superconducting circuits, cold atoms, ions, and photonic chips.

Dr. Angelakis completed his PhD in quantum optics with Sir Peter Knight FRS at Imperial College London, supported by the Greek State Scholarship Foundation. His PhD work in quantum light-matter interactions received the Valerie Myerscough prize in 2000 and the Institute of Physics UK prize in 2002. At age 25 in 2001, he was elected college research Fellow at University of Cambridge (St Catharine's JRF) and worked in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics until 2007. He joined the Centre for Quantum Computation in Cambridge (initiated by Artur Ekert) to work on quantum simulation and computation implementations. He became a Principal Investigator at CQT at its inception in 2008 after collaborating with the NUS quantum group since 2003.

His research focuses on quantum simulations of condensed matter, chemistry and material science, quantum machine learning, and applications of topological physics in quantum technologies. He is particularly known for pioneering work in quantum simulators using light-matter systems and qubit efficient quantum algorithms for industrial applications with NISQ processors. His group has developed novel encoding schemes that dramatically reduce the number of qubits required for optimization problems, enabling practical applications on current quantum hardware.

His recent publications show a strong trend toward practical quantum advantage, with applications spanning quantum chemistry, financial optimization, vehicle routing problems, and quantum machine learning. The research demonstrates how theoretical quantum concepts can be translated into practical algorithms for near-term quantum devices, with particular emphasis on qubit-efficient encodings and shallow circuit implementations.

• Valerie Myerscough prize (2000)
• Institute of Physics UK prize (2002)
• Google Quantum Innovation Prize (2018)

Dr. Angelakis actively mentors PhD students and research fellows, with several successful thesis defenses and publications co-authored with students. His group maintains strong industry connections, collaborating with entities like ExxonMobil, SGX, and Thales on practical quantum applications. The research group has edited two books and two special issues while producing a significant review article on quantum simulations. They maintain active collaborations with experimental groups across multiple quantum platforms, ensuring their theoretical work has practical experimental relevance.

The Angelakis group operates at the intersection of theoretical quantum physics and practical quantum computing applications, with a research program that spans fundamental quantum phenomena like many-body localization and quantum scars to industry-relevant optimization problems. Their work on topological data analysis applied to quantum systems represents a novel interdisciplinary approach connecting mathematics, physics, and machine learning.