Daniel Lokshtanov’s work explores the limits of what computers can solve, paving the way for advances in artificial intelligence and computational efficiency.

The firm says it has solved a problem on a quantum processor faster than a classical computer, and is optimistic about future scientific applications.

Designed to accelerate advances in medicine and other fields, the tech giant’s quantum algorithm runs 13,000 times as fast as software written for a traditional supercomputer.

A canonical problem in computer science is to find the shortest route to every point in a network. A new approach beats the classic algorithm taught in textbooks.

IBM said on Friday it is able to run a key quantum computing error correction algorithm on commonly available chips from Advanced Micro Devices , in a step toward commercializing super-powerful computers.