Dr. Roberto Desimone

Manager, Strategic Innovation (Disruptive Technologies) BAE Systems Applied Intelligence

Roberto Desimone is currently working at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, where he manages strategic innovation with disruptive technologies. He has a strong background in Artificial Intelligence with a PhD in Machine Learning from the AI department at the University of Edinburgh. He worked on US DoD DARPA programmes in early 1990s applying AI planning and scheduling techniques to military logistics and combat operations (Operation Desert Storm, Iraq War1) and worked for UK MoD for 15 years exploiting AI for military command decision-making. He got involved in quantum computing in 2013 and has been supporting the UK Quantum Technology Programme by holding commercialisation workshops for InnovateUK since 2016. This presentation covers an InnovateUK grant for exploring quantum algorithms for optimised planning and scheduling tasks.

Since May 2019, he has a part-time role as a Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence at the Quantum Engineering Technology (QET) Laboratory at the University of Bristol., where he supports exploitation of their quantum technology for industrial applications.