ERC Starting Grant to Davide Pierangeli for the project “LOOP”
ISC senior researcher Davide Pierangeli was awarded the prestigious ERC Starting grant from the European Community with the project “Optical Polarization for ultrafast computing”.
LOOP aims to surpass today’s digital processors for complex computational problems by realizing a new class of photonic computing machines that exploit the physical properties of coherent light to perform computations at ultra-high speeds unattainable with traditional computers. LOOP will run for 5 years with a funding of 1.5 M€ and it will allow Davide Pierangeli to lead an interdisciplinary research team and to build a cutting-edge optical computing laboratory.
The project stands out in the emerging field of optical computing, which aims to replace conventional electronic computers with specialized photonic technologies that would enable ultrafast and energy-efficient computing. The challenge is extremely important and urgent because, in the era of artificial intelligence, computational problems are so demanding that they are unsolvable in a useful time with current hardware. LOOP will address the challenge by introducing a new optical computing paradigm – polarization computing – with the goal of realizing a new generation of nonlinear optical processors based on the polarization of light. The use of the optical polarization for computing is a largely unexplored possibility that would open new horizons for ultrafast hardware with a strong impact on many scientific and technological areas, from computer vision to machine learning.
The ERC funds highly innovative, ambitious, and high-impact research projects by outstanding internationally recognized researchers. For more information, visit: https://erc.europa.eu
Davide Pierangeli, senior researcher at ISC Rome Sapienza, is one of the emerging international figures in the field of photonics. In 2022 he was awarded the “Panizza and Galimberti” Prize by the Italian Physical Society for his important contributions to nonlinear optics.
Contact:
Davide Pierangeli, ISC, davide.pierangeli@cnr.it
