François Chung, Ph.D.

Fujitsu project @Brussels, Belgium (2019). Using a digital circuit design inspired by quantum phenomena, Fujitsu’s Digital Annealer (DA) computational architecture bridges the gap to the quantum world and paves the way for much faster, more efficient solving of today’s business problems. The solution is designed to solve large-scale combinatorial optimization problems, which are unsolvable using today’s classical computers.

Among the various quantum computing methods that exist in the market today, DA is categorized as an example of the annealing method, which focuses on solving combinatorial optimization problems and the achievement of successful results with rapid operational capabilities. Unlike classical computers, Digital Annealing does not require programming, simply setting parameters allows calculations to be performed.

DA solution is applicable for a wide range of use cases, across various sectors, such as:

• Finance: investment portfolio optimization through risk diversification;
• Pharmaceutical: molecular similarity search for drug discovery;
• Marketing: clustering for big data utilization;
• Logistics: route optimization for reducing traffic congestion;
• Manufacturing: manpower management, production control scheduling.

Within the Digital Business Solutions (DBS) team, my role consists in supporting DA activities in Belgium and across EMEIA region, and includes tasks related to presales (e.g. DA solution presentation), business analysis (e.g. analyzing client’s business needs), data science (e.g.converting optimization problems into mathematical formulation) and project management (e.g. project coordination during the implementation phase).

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