Quantum mechanics and computer science are two of the biggest developments in the last century in science and technology: quantum mechanics gave us the opportunity to understand nature at the nanoscale, where the laws of physics are fundamentally different from the conventional (classical) physics; information technologies have revolutionized our everyday lives.

Quantum computing and quantum information science bring these fields together, applying quantum mechanics to problems in computing and communication. After Shor's 1994 discovery of a quantum algorithm for factoring integers, which threatened the security of a widely-used encryption method, interest in quantum information science thrived. Other achievements of quantum information science include efficient and secure protocols for communication and cryptography. Those protocols have already resulted in quantum cryptography devices that are commercially available.

The computer science group’s activity covers a wide range of areas in quantum computing and information theory, often in close connection with related research areas in classical theoretical computer science. We mostly investigate quantum algorithms, complexity and quantum-safe cryptography. Quantum algorithms provide a recipe for efficiently solving ractical problems on a quantum computer, of particular interest are problems which are difficult to solve on a classically. The study of quantum computational complexity is about understanding the fundamental limitations of information processing tasks in nature. By understanding such limits, it can offer a guide to crafting new algorithms and communication protocols. Quantum-safe cryptography is concerned with the design and the evaluation of cryptographic systems which are resistant even to quantum attacks.