USC assistant professor Ibrahim Sabek has received a $627,250 NSF CAREER Award for a five-year project called 'Toward Quantum-Augmented Database Systems.' The research aims to integrate quantum processors directly into database engines to tackle complex optimization tasks including query planning, transaction scheduling, and index selection. Because current quantum hardware is limited, the approach is hybrid: quantum processors handle the hardest combinatorial subproblems while classical components manage the rest. Early prototypes have already shown speedups exceeding 10x over conventional database optimizers on benchmark queries. The project also aims to identify which database optimization problems can achieve a true 'quantum advantage' and to build high-level tools so database developers can use quantum solvers without deep quantum expertise. Sabek's team has access to IBM quantum processors and the D-Wave Advantage system at USC's Quantum Computing Center.
