Technology Product Impact

Over the course of his career, Dr. Pistoia has contributed code and technology to numerous products, in various domains.

Quantum Computing

Dr. Marco Pistoia became is one the main contributors to IBM's software stack for quantum computing, called Quantum Information Science Kit (Qiskit). Specifically, Dr. Pistoia leads an international team of researchers and personally designed and contributed a large amount of code and technology to the following Qiskit components:

  1. Qiskit Algorithms for Quantum Applications (Aqua)
  2. Qiskit Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  3. Qiskit Optimization
  4. Qiskit Finance
  5. Qiskit Chemistry

Dr. Pistoia has contributed almost all of the algorithms and algorithmic components of Qiskit Aqua. He has also contributed numerous Qiskit Aqua Advanced Tutorials (Quantum Algorithms, Chemistry, Artificial Intelligence, Optimization, and Finance), including the following:

  1. Qiskit Aqua Finance: Option Pricing
  2. Qiskit Aqua Finance: Fixed Income Pricing
  3. Qiskit Aqua Finance: Pricing European Call Option
  4. Qiskit Aqua Finance: Pricing European Put Option
  5. Qiskit Aqua Finance: Pricing Fixed-income Assets
  6. Qiskit Aqua Finance: Option Pricing
  7. Qiskit Aqua Finance: Portfolio Optimization
  8. Qiskit Aqua Optimization: Max-Cut and Traveling Salesman with VQE
  9. Qiskit Aqua Optimization: Automatic Generation of Ising Hamiltonians
  10. Qiskit Aqua Artificial Intelligence: Classification via Quantum-enhanced Support Vector Machines
  11. Qiskit Aqua Chemistry: Ground-state Energy and Dipole Moment Declarative Computation
  12. Qiskit Aqua Chemistry: Ground-state Energy and Dipole Moment Programmatic Computation
  13. Qiskit Aqua Chemistry: Dissociation Profile Computation via VQE

Additionally, Dr. Pistoia contributed 53 Qiskit Aqua Community Tutorials in the areas of Quantum Algorithms, Chemistry, Artificial Intelligence, Optimization, and Finance.

Dr. Pistoia has been the inventor of 26 patent applications on Quantum Computing, all filed in the years 2018 and 2019. He has also been the authors of numerous conference publications, journal articles, and paper preprints in the field of quantum algorithms and applications. For his work, he has received two IBM Corporate Awards in 2019 (a Corporate Award is the highest technical recognition inside IBM, and Dr. Pistoia has been the only employee worldwide, in a population of over 350,000 employees, to receive two corporate awards in 2019).

Secure Language Design and Implementation

Dr. Pistoia was part of the IBM and Sun Microsystems joint team who designed and developed the Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) security models. He is the lead author of the books Enterprise Java Security (published by Addison-Wesley in English and by Tsinghua University Press in Chinese) and Java 2 Network Security (published by Prentice Hall), both used as textbooks in many universities worldwide. He also published the following scholarly papers in the area of secure programming language design: Beyond Stack Inspection: A Unified Access-Control and Information-Flow Security Model (IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy 2007) and A language for information flow: dynamic tracking in multiple interdependent dimensions (ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Programming Languages and Analysis for Security 2008).

Program Analysis and Machine Learning

In the course of his career, Dr. Pistoia has conducted research in the area of Program Analysis for code quality and security enforcement. He was among the first researchers worldwide to integrate Program Analysis with Machine Learning. He contributed code and technology to the following IBM products for program analysis, code quality, and security:

  1. IBM WebSphere Application Server
  2. IBM Rational Software Analyzer
  3. IBM Security AppScan Source

On this topic, he has published numerous journal articles and conference papers at the most important venues worldwide, and received five Best Paper Awards (three ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Awards at the ACM ISSTA 2007, 2011 and 2014 conferences, respectively, a Best Paper Award at the ACM IUI 2017 conference, and an Honorable Mention at the IEEE VL/HCC 2017 Symposium).

The permission analysis, privileged-code analysis, and subject-rights analysis Dr. Pistoia published at OOPSLA 2002, ECOOP 2005 and ECOOP 2015, respectively, were all used against the code of IBM WebSphere Application Server to ensure proper enforcement of the Principle of Complete Privilege.

Dr. Pistoia is also the invited editor of the book Security Data with Machine Learning, to be published by IGI Global in July 2020.

Security Middleware for Mobile Computing

In 2012, Dr. Pistoia was one of the four IBM researchers who conceived the IBM MobileFirst Global Technology Outlook (GTO), which led to the creation of the IBM MobileFirst brand. He actively participated in the strategic alliance of IBM and Apple, and contributed code and technology to the main IBM products in mobile computing:

  1. IBM Fiberlink MaaS360
  2. IBM MobileFirst Platform Development Foundation
  3. IBM Tealeaf CX Mobile
  4. IBM Rational Test Workbench

Dr. Pistoia has published his work on mobile computing middleware in numerous conference papers and journal articles, and in a book chapter, and has received four IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards and two IBM Outstanding Innovation Awards.