Witnessed the Information Technology revolution of the last decades, from the development of artificial intelligence to the development of the Internet and quantum information processing:
Under the direction of Luigi Stringa, design and development of the first programmable parallel processor commercialized in the world, with application to pattern recognition (1975-1980).
As director of the Information Technology Division of Elsag Bailey, reporting to the company’s CEO Enrico Albareto, design and development of large scale IT systems based on the Internet architecture, in cooperation with the MCI InformationTechnology group of Vint Cerf, coinventor of the Internet and Alan Turing Award 2004, and the NetExpress group of Barry Wessler, coinventor of ARPANET, forerunner of the Internet (1981-2006).
Proposed, in 1991, the concept of quantum ground state computation.
With Mario Rasetti, conceived the idea of the 1993-1998 Elsag Bailey-ISI workshops on quantum communication and computation (the villa Gualino Turin workshops); sponsored these workshops on behalf of Elsag Bailey (see pictures).
Investigated the foundations of quantum computation in cooperation with David Ritz Finkelstein; developed the Elsag Bailey quantum lab in cooperation with Fabio Bovino, Sandra Bruzzo, Anna Maria Colla, Ileana D’Angelo, Artur Ekert, Anna Martinoli, Alexander Sergienko, and Piero Varisco; joined three European Union ESPRIT and QAP quantum information projects; developed the MIUR (Ministero Università e Ricerca Scientifica) and Segredifesa quantum cryptography projects based on Ekert protocol, establishing world records in bit rate and distance (1995-2006).
Received the 2004 Finmeccanica innovation award.
Currently propounding an explanation of the quantum speed:up, the fact that quantum computers can solve some problems with fewer computation steps than the minimum number required by classical computers. The explanation relies on retro-causality, on quantum computers knowing in advance half of the solution they will find in the future.