Román Orús receives the ‘Physics, Innovation and Technology’ award from the Spanish Royal Society of Physics

The Ikerbasque professor at the DIPC, and co-founder and scientific director of Multiverse Computing, a company located on the Donostia Campus of the Basque Country Technology Park, was recognised for his important contribution to the field of quantum technologies.

The juries of the 2024 edition of the Royal Spanish Physics Society-BBVA Foundation Physics Awards have decided to award this prize in the ‘Physics, Innovation and Technology’ category to Román Orús, Ikerbasque professor at the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC) and co-founder and scientific director of Multiverse Computing.

In their decision, the jurors highlighted Orús’ extensive career in the field of quantum technologies. ‘His contributions have generated important technological developments in the field of quantum computing and artificial intelligence. It also recognises the innovation achieved through the creation of Multiverse Computing, one of the most important quantum software companies in Europe,’ says the RSFE-FBBVA announcement.

‘I am deeply grateful to receive this significant award. For me this is a very special award not only because it comes from the Spanish Royal Society of Physics, but also because of the recognition it represents for the work in innovation and technology transfer that we have carried out, both at DIPC and Multiverse. It is a real honour,’ declared Román Orús after learning of the jury’s decision.

Román Orús’ candidacy was presented by the Donostia International Physics Center, an institution to which he has belonged since 2018 as an Ikerbasque research professor, and which since its origins has been committed to attracting excellent researchers, offering them an environment of autonomy and freedom to explore new ideas.

Currently, the DIPC is the BERC (Basque Excellence Research Centre) chosen by the Basque Government to lead the ‘quantum technologies’ area of the IKUR strategy, and plays a fundamental role in the BasQ (Basque Quantum) programme, promoted by the Basque Government and the three provincial councils, which will boost research, talent generation and innovation in quantum technologies in the Basque Country and deploy the sixth IBM quantum computer in the world in Donostia/San Sebastian.

The president of the DIPC, Pedro Miguel Etxenike, congratulated Román Orús on this award and pointed out that ‘for the DIPC it is a great joy that such a distinguished member of our community is recognised by the Spanish Royal Society of Physics. It is also a recognition of the commitment that the DIPC and the Basque Government have made to quantum technologies and their applications’.

An example of this commitment is Multiverse Computing, a software company for quantum computers co-founded by Román Orús in 2019 in Donostia, with the support of the DIPC and local institutions such as BIC Gipuzkoa. Multiverse has been recognised worldwide as a pioneer in the use of tensor networks for industrial applications, ahead of much larger companies such as SandboxAQ (Google spinoff), Amazon AWS and NVIDIA. CompactifAI, one of Multiverse’s products, has been recognised by the likes of NVIDIA and Intel as a revolution in the field of AI, enabling very significant reductions in power consumption and opening up the possibility of deploying these models for the first time without the need for cloud connectivity.