Finley Alexander Quinton
About
I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management (IØT). I have an MSc in physics and now work on quantum algorithms for hard combinatorial optimisation problems. Most of my work is on designing and testing quantum algorithms, with a particular current focus on quantum walks. Such algorithms have to exploit the specific structure of a problem in their design, and they have to be tested against well-tuned classical methods to establish where a computational advantage could be gained. Many of the problems I study are computational bottlenecks in the optimisation of our energy systems, where a new algorithmic paradigm could change which instances we are able to solve at realistic scale.
Research
Quantum optimisation with annealing and gate-based quantum computers. Hybrid quantum optimisation algorithms with a focus on their potential for energy systems.
Publications
2025
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Quinton, Finley Alexander;
Myhr, Per Arne Sevle;
Barani, Mostafa;
Crespo del Granado, Pedro Andres;
Zhang, Hongyu.
(2025)
Quantum annealing applications, challenges and limitations for optimisation problems compared to classical solvers.
Scientific Reports
Academic article
Journal publications
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Quinton, Finley Alexander;
Myhr, Per Arne Sevle;
Barani, Mostafa;
Crespo del Granado, Pedro Andres;
Zhang, Hongyu.
(2025)
Quantum annealing applications, challenges and limitations for optimisation problems compared to classical solvers.
Scientific Reports
Academic article
Teaching
Autum 2022:
Teaching assistant for MSc Particle Physics at NTNU.
Supervision
Spring 2024:
BSc student working on variants of the Quantum Approximate Optimisation Algorithm (QAOA) applied to the Scandinavian power grid.
Autumn 2024:
2 MSc students in on quantum optimisation and one group on multi-agent RL for the Norwegian intraday market.
Outreach
2026
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Conference lecturePariente, Ruben; Fuchs, Franz Georg; Quinton, Finley Alexander. (2026) A quantum greedy algorithm for the minimum vertex cover. International Workshop on Quantum Optimization 2026