The Information Technology Research Foundation has awarded Dr Arianne Meijer–van de Griend for the best doctoral dissertation in 2024. The topic of the dissertation was ‘Advances in Quantum Compilation in the NISQ Era’.
The field of the dissertation is quantum computing, and it is the first of its kind in this field of computer science in Finland. The main theme of the work is the compilation of high-abstraction level programs into a format that can be effectively processed by a quantum computer. The work highlights the role of programming in the use of quantum computers and significantly advances the field by presenting ways to optimise programmes into the most suitable form for quantum computers.
The dissertation significantly advances the new field of quantum computing in Finland and also has immediate industrial applications. Funding has already been secured for further work on the dissertation, and an active research group has been formed.
The Information Technology Research Foundation annually awards the prize to a distinguished doctoral dissertation in the field of information technology. The thesis must have been completed during the previous calendar year at a Finnish higher education institution. The award is granted on the basis of a proposal prepared by the Information Processing Society of Finland and is announced at the Annual Symposium of Computer Science in Finland, held in Helsinki on 2–3 June 2025.