James Ostrowski and Rebekah Herrman, professors at UT Knoxville, receive an NSF Grant to Transform Decision-Making amid Uncertainty
Making quick, precise judgments is crucial in a world that is becoming more and more complicated, from the erratic stability of electricity systems to the life-or-death timescales of emergency medicine. However, “stochastic” variables, random occurrences whose results are unknown until they occur, often muddle these judgments. Two academic members from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) have received a prestigious $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to address this topic.
Under the direction of Assistant Professor Rebekah Herrman and Professor and Associate Department Head James Ostrowski, the two-year initiative seeks to develop quantum computing-based solutions for multi-stage stochastic optimization issues. Determining whether quantum technology may outperform conventional techniques in handling the enormous uncertainties of the modern world is made possible by this research, which is a major advancement.
The Difficulty of Persistent Uncertainty
In energy, healthcare, banking, and logistics, thousands of vital decisions are made daily without enough information. For example, before test results are returned, a doctor frequently has to create a short-term treatment plan for a patient. In a similar vein, power grid managers must allocate generator assets today without knowing how much energy will be needed tomorrow or whether output will rely on the weather. While cargo ship arrival schedules are always changing, port authorities must deal with the logistical headache of arranging freight vehicles.
These situations are characterized as multi-stage stochastic problems: a series of choices in which the outcome of an earlier uncertain event determines each future option. “Getting these decisions right has enormous practical consequences,” as James Ostrowski observes. But the arithmetic involved in these issues is infamously challenging. The number of alternative outcomes grows exponentially over time, even with binary “yes/no” outcomes.
This burden is too much for traditional computational techniques to handle. To determine the best course of action, traditional computers must separately create and assess each scenario, a process that becomes unreasonably lengthy and imprecise as issues grow.
A Quantum Leap in Processing
Quantum computing provides a “natural fit” in this situation. Quantum circuits make use of a feature known as superposition, in contrast to classical bits, which are either 0 or 1. James Ostrowski shows that a quantum circuit can simultaneously encode all possible states into a single quantum state, rather than listing each possibility individually. Large, complicated scenario spaces may now be represented by researchers much more compactly than in the past because of this feature.
To take use of the distinct advantages of both systems, the study team will use a hybrid computational technique. The structure of these scenarios will be encoded and vast “solution landscapes” that would confound a classical computer would be explored through the use of quantum computation. In the meantime, classical computation will take care of the tasks for which it is already well-suited, such post-processing, solution evaluation, and parameter optimization.
Classical and quantum computation have fundamentally different, complementary strengths, James Ostrowski argues. The team intends to provide a template for how these two technologies may cooperate to tackle two-step uncertainty optimization issues by creating particular encoding techniques. This will serve as a prerequisite for ultimately taking on even more difficult, higher-stage situations.
Investing in Human Capital and Infrastructure
The award is an investment in the future of the American workforce, not just a source of funding for technology and software. The prize will support two PhD candidates working at the forefront of multidisciplinary research. While one student will concentrate on the fundamental creation and analysis of quantum circuit encodings, the other will be in charge of comparing the effectiveness of these quantum techniques to conventional classical benchmarks.
The team will have access to top-notch resources, such as the quantum computing capabilities at the Quantum Computing User Program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). According to James Ostrowski, “UT’s land-grant mission is about creating knowledge that serves the public, which also requires developing the next generation of researchers.” This relationship shows UT’s leadership in quantum research. He emphasizes that teaching operations research and quantum computing prepares students for top jobs in national labs, business, and academia.
Making Quantum Tools More Accessible
The dedication to open-source outcomes is a fundamental aspect of the NSF-funded initiative. James Ostrowski and Herrman want to publish many open-source software libraries after the funding expires. These will contain simulation interfaces, circuit templates, benchmark tasks, and lessons created especially for practitioners who might not be very knowledgeable about quantum physics.
The goal of this action is to make it easier for industrial engineers and applied researchers to enter fields like logistics and energy. Future researchers will be able to reliably compare quantum and conventional algorithms with the project’s benchmarks. “Results in a paper tell you what happened; an open source code base lets others reproduce, extend, and build on the work,” adds James Ostrowski. He sees this distribution as a means of creating a “community asset” out of federal scientific funding.
Real-World Impact for Everyday Citizens
The potential advantages for the general population are real, even though the math underlying the research is abstract. Enhancing stochastic optimization techniques directly improves supply chain dependability, energy resilience, and emergency preparedness, all of which have an impact on individuals’ day-to-day lives.
UT Knoxville seeks to fortify the nation’s infrastructure against the unpredictability of the future by converting government funding into accessible technology and long-term human capital. The availability of these quantum-enhanced technologies will provide industries a crucial place to start when investigating how they may improve their own operations in a world that is becoming more unpredictable.
