Short biography

Antonio Acín is an ICREA Research Professor at ICFO-The Institute of Photonic Sciences. He has a degree in Physics from the Universitat de Barcelona (UB) and in Telecommunication Engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. He got his PhD in Theoretical Physics in 2001 from the UB. After a post-doctoral stay in Geneva, in the group of Prof. Gisin (GAP-Optique), he joined ICFO in 2003. At ICFO, Acín leads the Quantum Information Theory group. He was awarded a Starting Grant and a Proof of Concept grant from the European Research Council (ERC), starting in 2008 and 2012, respectively. He has later been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant, starting in 2014.

Research interests

Most of the research work by Antonio Acín is in quantum information theory. This is a scientific area that studies how information is processed and transmitted when encoded on quantum particles. Using the quantum effects, new information tasks become possible: more powerful computers, unbreakable cryptography protocols and quantum teleportation. It is a very inter-disciplinary area combining tools and concepts from mathematics, computer science, physics and engineering. More recently, Acín's research activity also covers aspects of foundations of quantum physics, quantum thermodynamics, many-body physics and quantum optics.

Key words

Quantum Information Theory, Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Thermodynamics, Many-Body Physics and Quantum Optics.