Monday, 2 November
08:30–09:00
Registration
Registration and coffee
09:00–09:15
Opening
Welcome and conference opening
Annealing dynamics and nonequilibrium control
Session chair: Paul Warburton (University College London)
09:15–10:00
Invited
Madita Willsch
Jülich Supercomputing Centre, Forschungszentrum Jülich
Fast Coherent Evolution and Quasistatic Regimes: Benchmarking Quantum Annealing with Domain Wall Systems
10:00–10:25
Contributed
Takuya Hatomura
NTT, Inc.
Enhancing the performance of quantum annealing with weighted variational counterdiabatic driving
10:25–10:50
Contributed
Gregor Humar
Jožef Stefan Institute
Resonant false vacuum decay in two dimensions on a 4000-qubit quantum annealer
10:50–11:15
Break
Coffee break
Hardware-aware control and annealing protocols
Session chair: Janez Povh (Rudolfovo – Science and Technology Centre Novo mesto)
11:15–12:00
Invited
Mikhail Feigel'man
CENN Nanocenter / Jožef Stefan Institute
Hilbert space signatures of non-ergodic glassy dynamics
12:00–12:25
Contributed
Gonzalo Troncoso
Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech
Adiabatic control of a fluxonium in a Landau-Zener experiment
12:25–12:50
Contributed
Matthias Werner
Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech / University of Barcelona
Faster optimization and universal quantum computation by designing annealing schedules
12:50–14:10
Lunch
Lunch
D-Wave quantum simulation and interaction engineering
Session chair: Jaka Vodeb (Jožef Stefan Institute)
14:10–14:35
Contributed
Ajmeri Amreen Chowdhury
University of Strathclyde
Using domain walls to benchmark fast quantum anneals
14:35–15:00
Contributed
Natasha Feinstein
University College London
Effective XX-interactions for enhanced quantum annealing in the transverse-field Ising-model
15:00–15:25
Break
Coffee break
15:25–16:10
INQA D-Wave Lecture
Rahul Deshpande
D-Wave Quantum
The INQA D-Wave Lecture 2026 — Quantum Simulation on Quantum Annealers Beyond Quench Dynamics
16:10–16:35
Contributed
Daniil Teplitskiy
Jülich Supercomputing Centre / University of Cologne
Simulation of a Z2 lattice gauge theory on a D-Wave QPU
16:35–17:00
Contributed
Emanuele Mendicelli
University of Liverpool / Jožef Stefan Institute
Towards Hadron Spectroscopy and Dynamics with Quantum Annealers
17:00–17:15
Transition
Break / workshop transition
17:15–18:15
Optional workshop
Chris Rich
D-Wave Quantum
Hands-on Workshop with D-Wave Quantum Computers — registration required; max. 50 participants
Tuesday, 3 November
Optimization formulations, constraints and hardware-aware design
Session chair: Mikhail Feigel'man (CENN Nanocenter / Jožef Stefan Institute)
09:00–09:45
Invited
Tomohiro Hattori
Keio University
Design Strategies toward Hardware-Friendly Quantum Optimization
09:45–10:10
Contributed
Roman Kuzel
Rudolfovo – Science and Technology Centre Novo mesto
Encoding Matters More Than the Solver: Penalty Coefficients in QUBO Formulations for Quantum Annealing
10:10–10:35
Contributed
Daniel Warkentin
Forschungszentrum Jülich
Optimized cardinality constraints for quantum annealing
10:35–11:00
Break
Coffee break
Quantum resources, QAOA and the quantum–classical boundary
Session chair: Alessandro Zenesini (CNR-INO / Università di Trento)
11:00–11:45
Invited
Gianluca Passarelli
Università di Napoli Federico II
Do Quantum Resources Matter for Quantum Optimization?
11:45–12:10
Contributed
David Headley
Newcastle University
Understanding the Role of Quantum Weirdness in Solving Hard Optimization Problems
12:10–12:35
Contributed
Syed Muhammad Ali Hassan
The Cyprus Institute
Imaginarity as a necessary resource for trainability in QAOA
12:35–15:00
Poster session
17 posters
Poster boards P01–P17
Lunch + Poster Session — all posters presented simultaneously
Benchmarking and applications of quantum optimization
Session chair: Madita Willsch (Jülich Supercomputing Centre, Forschungszentrum Jülich)
15:00–15:45
Invited
Jakub Pawłowski
Wrocław University of Science and Technology / Quantumz.io
Closing the Quantum-Classical Scaling Gap in Approximate Optimization
15:45–16:10
Contributed
Mátyás Koniorczyk
HUN-REN Wigner Research Centre for Physics
QUBO benchmarks from mixed Hamming packing problems
16:10–16:35
Contributed
Taiga Hayashi
Keio University
Improving Ising-Machine-Assisted Black-Box Optimization with Field-Weighted Surrogate Models
16:35–17:00
Break
Coffee break
17:00–17:25
Contributed
Robert Banks
ParityQC Germany
Quantum Optimisation for Protein-Protein Interaction Network Alignment
17:25–17:50
Contributed
Shuta Kikuchi
Keio University
Effects of Variable Representation on Factorization Machine with Quadratic-Optimization Annealing for RNA Inverse Folding Problem
19:30–22:30
Dinner
INQA Conference Dinner
Wednesday, 4 November
Analogue quantum simulation and many-body dynamics
Session chair: Christopher Baldwin (Michigan State University)
09:00–09:45
Invited
Alessandro Zenesini
CNR-INO / Università di Trento
False and Hot Bubbles in Ferromagnetic Superfluids
09:45–10:10
Contributed
Andrea Basilio Rava
Forschungszentrum Jülich
Confinement Dynamics under Hardware-Induced Inhomogeneity in a Programmable Rydberg Atom Chain
10:10–10:35
Contributed
Andras Grabarits
University of Luxembourg
Universal dynamics of quantum phase transitions with fractional long-range interactions
10:35–11:00
Break
Coffee break
Hamiltonian methods and analogue quantum computation
Session chair: Gianluca Passarelli (Università di Napoli Federico II)
11:00–11:45
Invited
Jordi Riu Vicente
Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech
Reshaping quantum annealing landscapes with diagonal catalysts
11:45–12:10
Contributed
Ana Palacios
Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech
Closest Accessible Symmetry reduction: a tool for Hamiltonian interpolation analysis
12:10–12:35
Contributed
Arthur Braida
Université Paris Cité / IRIF (CNRS)
Hamiltonian eigenvalue transformation with Local Gadget
12:35–14:15
Lunch
Lunch
Advanced annealing architectures, encodings and quantum applications
Session chair: Rahul Deshpande (D-Wave Quantum)
14:15–15:00
Invited
Christopher Baldwin
Michigan State University
The robustness of adiabatic reverse annealing
15:00–15:25
Contributed
Shunta Ide
Keio University
Effective XY Interactions and Ground-State Sampling in Penalty-Based Quantum Annealing
15:25–15:50
Contributed
Yuya Seki
Keio University
Adiabatic quantum computation in bosonic systems for combinatorial optimization via polyhedral domain partition
15:50–16:15
Break
Coffee break
16:15–16:40
Contributed
Boni Paul
TCG Centres for Research and Education in Science and Technology
Applications of quantum annealing to magnetic dipole hyperfine structure constants: First results beyond energies for atoms
16:40–17:05
Contributed
Emanuele Costa
Barcelona Supercomputing Center
Simulating DOCI Nuclear Hamiltonians with Ising Systems
17:05–17:15
Closing
Closing remarks
Poster Session
Tuesday, 3 November, 12:35–15:00. All 17 posters are presented simultaneously. Poster numbers correspond to wall space assignments.
Kehinde Ogundipe
Alikhanian National Laboratory (Yerevan Physics Institute)
Toward a Qubit-Based Simulation of Continuous-Time Soliton Dynamics and Resonant Kink–Meson Scattering
Hilbert Johan Kappen
Radboud University
A Bayesian formulation of hybrid quantum-classical dynamics
Konosuke Okisawa
Tohoku University
Exact Solution of Multi-Car Paint Shop Problem
Eiji Kawase
Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
Effect of Integer-to-Binary Encoding on the Performance of Factorization Machine with Quadratic-Optimization Annealing for Constrained Engineering Optimization
César Fernández Lamas
Barcelona Supercomputing Center
Gadget Hamiltonians for an Implementation of Kitaev’s History-State Hamiltonian
Takuma Yoshihara
Tohoku University
QUBO-Based Generation of LF Auxiliary Material Addition Candidates Using Transformer Prediction and Quantum Annealing
Nicholas Chancellor
Newcastle University
Aircraft Loading Quatum Annealing Dataset
Charles Zhou
Quantum Intelligence, Inc.
Quantum Evolution and Collaborative Self-Organizing Agents
Kazuki Abe
Keio University
Correlation-Based Spin-Pair Merging for Quantum Annealing with Global Spin-Flip Symmetry
Jemma Bennett
Universität Innsbruck
A local-field belief propagation decoder for the LHZ parity embedding
Yosuke Mukasa
Keio University
Robust Factorization-Machine Training for FMQA under Noisy Evaluations
Beno Zupanc
Rudolfovo – Science and Technology Centre Novo mesto
QBIQ: An Exact Hybrid Branch-and-Bound Solver for Binary Quadratic Optimization
Duc-Truyen Le
Saitama University / iTHEMS, RIKEN
A Quantum Algorithm for the Quantum Mpemba Effect: Application to the Lattice Schwinger Model
Haruya Kato
Tohoku University
Jaikumar Assignment Linearization with Interaction Terms for the CVRP with Loading Incompatibilities: A QUBO Formulation and Its Evaluation
Pablo Pérez Fernández
Universidad de Salamanca
Topological edge states in a single flux qubit
Hiroto Toyoshima
Tohoku University
Construction of an Outlier Removal Algorithm Using Black-Box Optimization with Quantum Annealing
Gurpahul Singh
Perimeter Institute / University of Waterloo
Principles of Constrained Quantum Optimization