PressClub Global · Article.
BMW Group endows RWTH Aachen University with a new chair in quantum computing.
18.01.2024 Press Release
+++ BMW Group strengthens its position in the industrialisation of a still young technology +++
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Janina Latza
BMW Group
Tel: +49-89-382-12650
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Janina Latza
BMW Group
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Munich. The BMW Group is endowing RWTH Aachen University with a new professorship in "Quantum Information Systems" in the Department of Computer Science. Last Wednesday saw the official inauguration of Prof Dr Dominique Unruh, who will head the chair. In addition, the funding of an endowed chair at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has already been approved for 2021. The Chair of Quantum Algorithms and Applications will be headed by Prof. Dr Barbara Kraus.
Alexander Buresch, Senior Vice President BMW Group IT, explains the
BMW Group's commitment: "Our goal is to create an open software
ecosystem that optimally integrates quantum software and hardware and
thus accelerates the industrialisation of automotive applications.
This is precisely where endowed professors at universities such as the
Technical University of Munich and RWTH Aachen make an important
contribution to jointly creating pioneering innovations." While
the TUM chair lays the algorithmic foundations for industry-relevant
applications, the RWTH chair creates concrete software solutions and
the necessary software expertise.
Over the past seven years, the BMW Group's commitment to
research into quantum computing has led to an increasingly
far-reaching understanding of the technology. At the same time, the
company is reaching the limits of conventional hardware due to ever
larger and more complex optimisation problems, simulations and
applications of artificial intelligence. The BMW Group is an
established part of the quantum computing ecosystem and an innovation
leader in the automotive sector. With a targeted collaboration
strategy, the BMW Group is utilising synergies and driving forward the
field of quantum computing research while already exploiting the
advantages of this technology in its value chain.
"For years, we have been involved in many consortium
projects in the fields of battery production, artificial intelligence
and system engineering, in bilateral contract research and in the
joint organisation of education and research, and now we are also
increasingly active in the promising field of quantum computing
technology. As a mentor for this exciting and important future topic
for the BMW Group, I am looking forward to working with Prof Dr Unruh
and Prof Dr Kraus and to the results of our joint research," says
Stefan Floeck, Senior Vice President Product Line MINI and Compact
Class BMW.
Powerful optimisation algorithms, simulations and artificial
intelligence in the areas of planning, production and logistics - this
requires more and more computing power due to the growing complexity
and problem sizes. Quantum computing was identified back in 2017 as a
potential answer to the end of Moore's Law, which means that the
computing power available worldwide will no longer continue to
increase exponentially as before. The BMW Group therefore established
a dedicated quantum computing team that is already contributing to the
company's value creation by reformulating real-world problems from
development, production, distribution and many other areas and solving
them with quantum (inspired) algorithms. In collaboration with Amazon
Web Services, for example, the movements of robot arms during the
sealing of the underbody were optimised and it was discovered that
quantum computing-inspired algorithms have the potential to reduce the
cycle time at the Munich plant by up to 10%.
Other promising use cases include the simulation of battery and
fuel cells, numerical simulations of vehicle aerodynamics and
acoustics, efficient training of machine learning models and many
other areas. Today, the processing of such computationally intensive
processes often represents the bottleneck in the development of new
applications and products.
The BMW Group is a co-founder of the QUTAC consortium, in which
eleven of the largest German companies are working together to advance
quantum computing from an industrial perspective and conduct
application-related research. The BMW Group is also a member of a
total of four funded projects that bring together excellent academic
partners with commercial enterprises and start-ups with different
focuses in order to investigate the potential of quantum computing
using real industry use cases.
In the event of enquiries please contact:
BMW Group Public Communications
Janina Latza, Spokesperson BMW Group IT: Emerging
Technologies, Innovations & Cyber Security
Telefon:
+49-151-601-12650
E-Mail: Janina.Latza@bmw.de
Christophe Koenig, Head of Digital and Driving Experience
Communications
Spokesperson Digital Car, Automated Driving &
Driving Assistance Systems
Telefon: +49-89-382-56097
E-Mail:
Christophe.Koenig@bmwgroup.com
Internet: www.press.bmwgroup.com/deutschland
E-Mail: presse@bmw.de