Dyson School of Design Engineering Commencement Lecture 2025

Dr. Alessandro Curioni, IBM – How artificial intelligence and quantum computing are enabling a new era of accelerated discovery and design

Technology is transforming every aspect of our lives – from the way we work and communicate to how we address global challenges such as climate change and sustainability. As the newest school in Imperial’s Faculty of Engineering, the Dyson School of Design Engineering is rethinking the role of engineers – moving beyond making ‘better things’ to ‘making things better.’ This annual lecture brings together leading voices to consider how technology and human behaviour can be co-designed to drive positive change for people and planet. In this lecture, Alessandro Curioni (IBM Fellow, Vice President Europe and Africa and Director IBM Research Zurich) will explore how rapid advances in digital innovation and AI are reshaping society, and the critical role of collaboration between academia and industry in shaping a responsible and inclusive future. Abstract: We are currently experiencing the two biggest transformations in computing in decades. Generative AI and quantum computers not only accelerate computations but also enable us to represent previously unseizable problems in new and useful ways. Both technologies will synergistically impact all our research areas. In this presentation, I will explain how quantum computing and artificial intelligence are becoming new and essential instruments in the hands of scientists, opening a new era of accelerated scientific discovery.

Bio:

Dr. Alessandro Curioni is an IBM Fellow, Vice President of IBM Europe and Africa and Director of the IBM Research Lab in Zurich, Switzerland. He is responsible for IBM corporate research in Europe and leads IBM's global research strategies in Algorithms and Applications.

Dr. Curioni is an internationally recognized leader in the area of high-performance computing and computational science, where his innovative thinking and seminal contributions have helped solve some of the most complex scientific and technological problems in healthcare, aerospace, consumer goods and electronics. He was a member of the winning team recognized with the prestigious Gordon Bell Prize in 2013 and 2015. His research interests now include AI, Big Data and novel compute paradigms, such as neuromorphic and quantum computing.

Dr. Curioni received his undergraduate degree in Theoretical Chemistry and his PhD from Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy. He started at IBM Research – Zurich as a PhD student in 1993 before officially joining as a research staff member in 1998, where he had several research and manager roles, including being the founding manager of the Cognitive Computing and Computational Sciences department. He is a member of the Swiss Academy of Technical Sciences