Principal Investigator Marco Tomamichel awarded prestigious Investigatorship

Administered by Singapore’s National Research Foundation, the Investigatorship supports “ground-breaking, high-risk research”

Marco Tomamichel will lead a project on “Information Theory at the Quantum Frontier” for the NRF Investigatorship.

CQT Principal Investigator Marco Tomamichel is a recipient of the prestigious National Research Foundation (NRF) Investigatorship. He receives support for a five-year programme of research starting in August 2025.

The NRF Investigatorship is administered by Singapore’s National Research Foundation. It supports “ground-breaking, high-risk research” and is awarded to a small number of researchers each year after a rigorous selection process. A CQT Principal Investigator since 2020, Marco is also co-appointed as a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at National University of Singapore.

Information measures

Marco’s project, titled “Information Theory at the Quantum Frontier”, will further his research in the mathematical foundations of quantum information theory.

The development of quantum technologies is often motivated as a pursuit of quantum advantage, meaning the stage where the quantum computer, sensor or communication device exceeds the performance of its classical predecessors. Marco’s pitch to the National Research Foundation was this: in order to discover where quantum advantage resides we need to be able to quantify it first. This requires measures to describe information-processing tasks.

His group at CQT specialises in the study of entropy and other measures of quantum information and their applications in areas ranging from quantum cryptography and communication to learning theory.

Marco says, “Researchers in the field currently use a large zoo of different entropies, some of them introduced by our group, and one the main goals of the project is to bring some order to this zoo via a more axiomatic approach to information measures.”

The project also allows the group to drive forward their research exploring the fundamental limits of quantum communication and learning.

“This award means a lot to me,” says Marco. “I see the award not only as a recognition of my past research in this area but also a statement by the NRF that this kind of fundamental research will continue to play an important role in Singapore’s research landscape. And that tells me that I chose the right place to build up my research group!”

Marco has existing group members who will move to this project, with CQT Senior Research Fellow Erkka Haapasalo taking a main role.

Other CQT group leaders who hold an NRF Investigatorship are Mile Gu and Divesh Aggarwal, recipients in 2024.