Quantum Winter School

About the Event

Join us at the Quantum Winter School for an immersive exploration into the world of Quantum Computing, Quantum Machine Learning, and Quantum Sensing. Over three days, renowned experts will guide you through foundational principles and cutting-edge advancements in quantum technology, preparing you for the future of computing. Whether you're a student, researcher, or industry professional, this workshop offers an exceptional opportunity to deepen your understanding and engage with leaders in the field.

Event Schedule

Day 1 - January 13

Day 2 - January 14

Day 3 - January 15

Day 4 - January 16

Meet the Presenters

Luigi Amico

Technology Innovation Institute

Prof. Amico research focuses on quantum technology and quantum statistical physics, ranging from mathematical physics to many-body, mesoscopic physics and ultra-cold gases. Prof. Amico is full professor of Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics, University of Catania (on leave) and foreign associate member of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) (Italy). He is a Visiting Research Professor at the Center for Quantum Technologies (Singapore), holds the ‘Lanef-Chaire d’excellence’ in Grenoble (France) and the ‘Distinguished Invited Professor’ position at the joint Franco-Singaporean MajuLab CNRS-UNS-NUS-NTU. Since 2024, he is 'Honorary Professor’ University of Kent (UK). Before joining TII, Prof. Amico has been associated to several institutions including CNR-IMM Excellence Center for Condensed Matter and Material Science (Italy), and Visiting Professor in Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (Canada), Rutheford Appleton Laboratories (UK), and Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain). Read more

Khaled Elbassioni

Khalifa University

Prof. Khaled Elbassioni is a Professor at Khalifa University since 2017. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Computer Science from Alexandria University, Egypt, and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Rutgers University, USA. From 2006 to 2012, he was a Senior Researcher at Max-Planck Institute for Informatics, Saarbruecken, Germany, and from 2012 to 2017, he was an Associate Professor at Masdar Institute of Science and Technology. Dr. Elbassioni’s main research interests are in the design and analysis of algorithms, with special focus on developing efficient algorithms for large-scale optimization problems. He has more than 100 papers in refereed conferences and journals. He has served on the technical program committees of a number of international conferences, and has been a guest editor for two special issues of the journals Algorithmica and the International Journal on Computational Geometry & Applications. Read more

Ernesto Damiani

Khalifa University

Prof. Ernesto Damiani is a Professor of Practice in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department and the Senior Director of the Khalifa University Center for Cyber Physical Systems (C2PS). Dr. Damiani holds a full professorship at the Department of Computer Science, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy, where he leads the SESAR research lab. Ernesto’s research interests include data-intensive service-oriented architectures, Cyber-Physical Systems security and privacy-preserving Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics. Dr. Damiani has held visiting positions at a number of international institutions, including George Mason University in Virginia, US; Tokyo Denki University, Japan; LaTrobe University in Melbourne, Australia; and the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA) at Lyon, France. He has been a Fellow of the Japanese Society for the Progress of Science. Dr. Damiani served as Principal Investigator of many large-scale research projects funded by the European Commission in the context of the Horizon and Next Generation Europe Programs, by the Italian Ministry of Research, and by private companies such as British Telecom, Cisco Systems, SAP, TIM/Telecom Italia, Siemens Networks (now Nokia Siemens) and many others. Dr. Damiani is the Editor-in-Chief of the Transactions on Service Computing, the flagship Transaction on Services of the IEEE Computer Society. He has served in the editorial board of several others international journals, including the IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems and the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics. He served as Vice-Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Applied Computing, and of IEEE Technical Committee on Industrial Informatics. In 2008, Ernesto was nominated ACM Distinguished Scientist. He received many awards, including the Chester Sall Award from the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, the Research and Innovation Award from the IEEE Technical Committee on Homeland Security and the Outstanding Service Award from the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP). Read more

Victor Montenegro

University of Electronic Science and Technology of China

I was born in Santiago de Chile on a warmish Autumn day in the mid-80s. I decided to course the Physics program at Universidad Catolica de Chile (a.k.a, PUC), from which I obtained my B.Sc and M.Sc degree in Physics under the supervision of Prof. Miguel Orszag. My research, back then, was focused on Quantum Optics and Quantum Information in cQED. In 2011, I was awarded a 4-year scholarship from the Chilean government (Conicyt) to course a Ph.D. degree at University College London (a.k.a UCL), this time under Prof. Sougato Bose’s supervision. During this time, I not only enjoyed the friendly British pubs, or the more-than-occasionally afternoon football with friends, but also I investigated on cavity quantum optomechanics and hybrid spin-optomechanical systems. After my Ph.D. degree, I returned to PUC to work as the principal investigator with Prof. Orszag, thanks to a 3-year postdoctoral grant funded by the Chilean government (Fondecyt). Currently, I’m part of Prof. Abolfazl’s group in Chengdu under the Talent Introduction Program, where I’ve focused my research on quantum metrology. Read more

Matteo Paris

University of Milano

Matteo G. A. Paris is a prominent physicist and full professor at the University of Milano (Università degli Studi di Milano) in Italy. He specializes in quantum information and quantum optics within the university's department of physics, where he founded and lead the Pure and Applied Quantum Mechanics research group (http://sites.unimi.it/aqm), composed by about fifteen persons. His academic focus lies in theoretical physics, particularly in the area of matter models, mathematical methods, and applications. Professor Paris completed his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Pavia, and then was a post-doc in the group "Nichtklassiche Strahlung" of the Max-Planck-Society (Berlin). Before joining UniMi in 2004, he was research fellow of the University of Pavia and research associate of the National Institute for the Physics of Matter (INFM). He is a theoretician working in close collaborations with experimentalists on quantum information & technology, quantum optics, open quantum systems and foundations of quantum mechanics. In these fields he is author of 350+ publications on international journals, which received 21000+ citations, with about 70 invited talks and seminars; his H-index is currently 71 (Google schoolar). His main contributions are in the fields of quantum estimation of states and operations, generation and application of quantum correlations, quantum information processing, quantum walks and algorithms, open quantum systems, quantum metrology and high-precision measurements. In the recent years, he is mostly working in quantum sensing and metrology, continuous variable quantum technology, and quantum walks. He is also active in seeking for novel degrees of freedom for quantum technology, and to improve metrological protocols in the search of new physics. Read more

Saurabh Ray

New York University Abu Dhabi

Dr. Ray completed his undergraduate studies in Computer Science and Engineering in Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. He received a PhD in Computer Science from Universität des Saarlandes in Germany in 2009 and since then has done postdoctoral research work at the Max-Plank Institute for Informatics in Germany, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland and Ben Gurion University in Israel. As a postdoc, Saurabh has spent time in both Computer Science and Mathematics departments. His research interests are in discrete and computational geometry, extremal combinatorics, and approximation algorithms. He is particularly excited about novel applications of mathematics in Computer Science. Read more

Giacomo Roati

University of Florence

Dr. Giacomo obtained his PhD in Physics in 2003 (cum laude) at the University of Trento, Italy. He is currently Director of Research at CNR-INO, Italy, and holds visiting scientist positions in the USA, Mexico, and Brazil. His interests regard quantum simulation with strongly-correlated atomic Fermi systems. Read more

Abolfazl Bayat

University of Electronic Science and Technology of China

Professor Abolfazl Bayat leads the Physics of Quantum Information Technologies group at the IFFS. His research interests include quantum sensing and quantum simulation. On quantum sensing side, he has been focused on developing quantum many-body sensors which have the capability of surpassing the performance of classical probes. On quantum simulation side, he is interested in quantum machine learning and variational quantum simulation of many-body systems. The group is very productive with a strong publication track-record in high impact journals. Since 2018, Professor Bayat has established his group in UESTC, he has published 8 papers in Physical Review Letters. Read more

Vaidehi Gawande

Creed & Bear

Vaidehi is head of quantum computing at Creed & Bear, Dubai. Her work spans six sectors, with four Proofs of Concept (PoCs) completed and one patented innovation. She specializes in quantum machine learning and has made significant contributions to advancing quantum technologies. Read more

Ilaria Siloi

University of Southern California (USC)

Dr. Ilaria Siloi is a Computational Physicist with over six years of experience as a research scholar. She began her academic journey with a Ph.D., where she specialized in quantum information and developed expertise in modeling and detecting quantum correlations within realistic spin systems, particularly focusing on molecular nanomagnets. Following her doctoral studies, she worked as a postdoctoral associate in Italy and Finland for two years, concentrating on the decoherent dynamics of few-particle quantum walks. Her growing interest in solid-state physics and material science led her to the University of North Texas, where she delved into ab initio methodologies. During her time there, her research was centered on solving electronic structure problems and designing novel thermoelectric materials. Recently, driven by her enthusiasm for quantum technologies and a curiosity for solving real-world challenges using quantum computing, she joined the University of Southern California. At USC, she now applies quantum annealers and gate-based quantum computers to address complex problems in quantum chemistry and materials science. Read more

Moustafa Youssef

American University of Cairo (AUC)

Moustafa Youssef is a professor at The American University in Cairo and founder and director of the Wireless Research Center of Excellence, Egypt. His research interests include mobile wireless networks, mobile computing, location determination technologies, pervasive computing, and network security. He is an associate editor for IEEE TMC and ACM TSAS, served as the lead guest editor of the IEEE Computer Special Issue on Transformative Technologies and an area editor of ACM MC2R as well as on the organizing and technical committees of numerous prestigious conferences. He is the recipient of the 2003 University of Maryland Invention of the Year award, the 2010 TWAS-AAS-Microsoft Award for Young Scientists, the 2013 and 2014 COMESA Innovation Award, the 2013 ACM SIGSpatial GIS Conference Best Paper Award, the 2017 Egyptian State Award, multiple Google Research Awards, among many others. He is also an IEEE and ACM fellow. Visit Youssef's Google Scholar profile for more information. Read more

Meet the Organizers

Omar Alhussein

Khalifa University

Omar Alhussein is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates. Prior to this, he served as a Senior Research Engineer with the Advanced Networking Team at Huawei Technologies Canada in Ottawa from 2020 to 2023. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada (2020), an M.A.Sc. in Engineering Science from Simon Fraser University, Canada (2015), and a B.Sc. in Communications Engineering from Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (2013). His research interests include network automation and optimization, network management, and machine learning. Read more

Berihu Gebrehiwot

Khalifa University

Dr. Berihu Teklu Gebrehiwot graduated from the University of Milan, Italy, with a Ph.D. in Theoretical Quantum Information. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Milan, at University of Blaise Pascal in France and at the Center for Cyber-Physical Systems (C2PS), Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, before joining the Department of Mathematics as Assistant Professor. He is a Mathematical Physicist, and his expertise includes quantum information, quantum metrology and sensing and quantum computation. His main contributions are in the fields of quantum estimation of states and operations, generation and application of entanglement, quantum information, and communication. Read more

Henok Daniel

Khalifa University

Henok Daniel is a Research Assistant in the Department of Computer Science at Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates. He obtained his B.Sc in Computer Engineering at Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (2023). Read more

Hadi Otrok

Khalifa University

Hadi Otrok (senior member, IEEE) received his Ph.D. in ECE from Concordia University. Prof. Otrok holds a professor position in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at Khalifa University, an affiliate associate professor in the Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, and an affiliate associate professor in the electrical department at Ecole de Technologie Superieure (ETS), Montreal, Canada. He is an associate editor at: IEEE TNSM, IEEE TSC, and Ad-hoc networks (Elsevier). He served in the editoral board of IEEE Networks and IEEE communication letters. He co-chaired several committees at various IEEE conferences including GlobeCom, IWCMC, and WiMob. Also, he is a member of several admin and university committees, founder and organizer of several contests, and chair of K – 12 Ministry of Education (MoE) Computer Science - AI Framework. His research interests include: Blockchain, Federated Learning, Crowd sensing and sourcing, Ad hoc networks, Cloud and Fog Computing: Game theoretical Models, and Computer and Networks security. Read more

Sami Muhaidat

Khalifa University

Prof. Sami Muhaidat is currently Professor and the Deputy Director of the 6G Research Center at Khalifa University. Before joining Khalifa University, he was an Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering Science at Simon Fraser University, BC, from 2008-2012. He was also an NSERC postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto from 2007-2008. He is a Professional Engineer registered in the province of British Columbia and an Adjunct Professor at Carleton University, Canada. Sami's research interests focus on the following areas: 1) IoT with emphasis on battery-free (energy-constrained) devices, 2) communication theory (physical layer security, 6G enabling technologies, and optical wireless communications), and 3) machine learning and their applications in the fields of wireless networks and security. He made contributions in the areas of low-power IoT networks, machine learning for wireless communications, physical layer security, cognitive radio networks, MIMO, cooperative communication networks, optical communications, wireless power transfer, hardware impairments, and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) for future wireless networks. He has published/submitted over 350 peer-reviewed technical papers/book chapters in these areas. Sami was invited to give seminars/presentations at several international conferences/workshops and has received over USD 5M in internal and external funding. During his career, he supervised/co-supervised over 40 graduate students/visitors and postdocs, including 16 Ph.D. students and 12 postdocs. He has a significant record of institutional and professional service, which has been recognized by his peers. His record includes high-profile editorial positions in prestigious IEEE journals: IEEE Transactions on Communications (Area Editor and Editor), IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society (Lead Guest Editor), IEEE Communications Letter (Senior Editor and Editor), and IEEE Transaction Vehicular Technology (Associate Editor). In addition, he received the top Associate Editor award for outstanding contributions to IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology. He served as the Chair of IEEE UAE SPC Chapter from 2017-2018. Sami was the recipient of several scholarships during his undergraduate and graduate studies and a winner of the 2006 NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship competition. Read more

Ernesto Damiani

Khalifa University

Prof. Ernesto Damiani is a Professor of Practice in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department and the Senior Director of the Khalifa University Center for Cyber Physical Systems (C2PS). Dr. Damiani holds a full professorship at the Department of Computer Science, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy, where he leads the SESAR research lab. Ernesto’s research interests include data-intensive service-oriented architectures, Cyber-Physical Systems security and privacy-preserving Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics. Dr. Damiani has held visiting positions at a number of international institutions, including George Mason University in Virginia, US; Tokyo Denki University, Japan; LaTrobe University in Melbourne, Australia; and the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA) at Lyon, France. He has been a Fellow of the Japanese Society for the Progress of Science. Dr. Damiani served as Principal Investigator of many large-scale research projects funded by the European Commission in the context of the Horizon and Next Generation Europe Programs, by the Italian Ministry of Research, and by private companies such as British Telecom, Cisco Systems, SAP, TIM/Telecom Italia, Siemens Networks (now Nokia Siemens) and many others. Dr. Damiani is the Editor-in-Chief of the Transactions on Service Computing, the flagship Transaction on Services of the IEEE Computer Society. He has served in the editorial board of several others international journals, including the IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems and the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics. He served as Vice-Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Applied Computing, and of IEEE Technical Committee on Industrial Informatics. In 2008, Ernesto was nominated ACM Distinguished Scientist. He received many awards, including the Chester Sall Award from the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, the Research and Innovation Award from the IEEE Technical Committee on Homeland Security and the Outstanding Service Award from the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP). Read more

How to Get Here to Khalifa University Main Campus

Khalifa University Main Campus is located in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The campus is easily accessible by car, public transportation, and taxi services. Please find below the campus address and directions for reaching us conveniently. You can enter from Gates 2, 6, and 7 as indicated by the red arrows. The event will hold place in L building, auditorium L02012.

Address: Khalifa University (Main Campus), Abu Dhabi, UAE

By Car: Enter the campus via the main gate and follow signage for visitor parking. Parking is available for attendees.

By Public Transport: The campus is accessible by several bus routes. Check local schedules for the most convenient options.

By Taxi: Taxis can drop you off directly at the main entrance. Just mention "Khalifa University Main Campus" to the driver.