Sascha Mücke

Computer Scientist. Musician. Composer.

sandia_500px.jpg

I am a researcher at the Lamarr Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, located at TU Dortmund University. I did my PhD in 2025, with a focus on the interplay of quantum computing and machine learning. Much of my research revolves around combinatorial optimization problems, how they can be solved on quantum annealers, and their applications for machine learning. In particular, I often use QUBO, both to solve optimization problems using AQC, but also as a way to parametrize Gibbs distributions (see, e.g., here). I am also interested in non-gradient-based optimization methods such as evolutionary algorithms; as part of my master’s thesis, I implemented a quantum-inspired QUBO solver on an FPGA, which has since been patented.

In addition to my scientific activities, I am a passionate musician: For almost 20 years I have been a member in several choirs and vocal ensembles, currently in Bach-Chor Hagen, the Bochum Provost Chamber Choir, and the soloist ensembles Vokal Ruhr and Vollklang. My voice type is tenor. I sometimes also perform as a soloist. In addition, I occasionally compose my own music. In 2022, some of my pieces were published in a collection of contemporary organ music. Some recordings of my compositions can be found on my YouTube channel and on this website.

news

Sep 25, 2025 Had a great time at ECML PKDD 2025 in Porto (Portugal) last week, many interesting talks and keynotes!
Sep 8, 2025 Last week I attended the IEEE Quantum Week 2025 in Albuquerque, NM. Lots of cool impressions and connections made!
Aug 26, 2025 Today I received my doctoral certificate! 🎓 My dissertation is titled Quantum-Classical Optimization in Machine Learning
Jul 29, 2023 My new website just launched!

selected publications

2025

  1. Explaining quantum circuits with Shapley values: towards explainable quantum machine learning
    Raoul Heese, Thore Gerlach, Sascha Mücke, and 3 more authors
    Quantum Machine Intelligence, 2025
    BIB 
    @article{heese.etal.2025a,
  author = {Heese, Raoul and Gerlach, Thore and M{\"u}cke, Sascha and M{\"u}ller, Sabine and Jakobs, Matthias and Piatkowski, Nico},
  title = {Explaining quantum circuits with Shapley values: towards explainable quantum machine learning},
  journal = {Quantum Machine Intelligence},
  year = {2025},
  volume = {7},
  number = {1},
  pages = {27},
  doi = {10.1007/s42484-025-00254-8},
  website = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42484-025-00254-8},
  selected = {true}
}
    Paper
  2. Optimum-Preserving QUBO Parameter Compression
    Sascha Mücke, Thore Gerlach, and Nico Piatkowski
    Quantum Machine Intelligence, 2025
    BIB 
    @article{muecke.etal.2024a,
  title = {Optimum-Preserving {QUBO} {Parameter} {Compression}},
  author = {M{\"u}cke, Sascha and Gerlach, Thore and Piatkowski, Nico},
  year = {2025},
  journal = {Quantum Machine Intelligence},
  volume = {7},
  doi = {10.1007/s42484-024-00219-3},
  website = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42484-024-00219-3},
  selected = {true}
}
    Paper
  3. Quantum-Classical Optimization in Machine Learning
    Sascha Mücke
    Jul 2025
    BIB 
    @book{muecke.2025a,
  author = {M{\"{u}}cke, Sascha},
  title = {Quantum-Classical Optimization in Machine Learning},
  series = {Schriftenreihe Virtual Machining},
  volume = {8},
  publisher = {Shaker Verlag},
  year = {2025},
  month = jul,
  address = {D{\"{u}}ren},
  isbn = {9783819101342},
  pdf = {dissertation_muecke_final.pdf},
  selected = {true}
}
    PDF

2024

  1. On the effects of biased quantum random numbers on the initialization of artificial neural networks
    Raoul Heese, Moritz Wolter, Sascha Mücke, and 2 more authors
    Machine Learning, Jul 2024
    BIB 
    @article{heese2024effects,
  title = {On the effects of biased quantum random numbers on the initialization of artificial neural networks},
  author = {Heese, Raoul and Wolter, Moritz and M{\"u}cke, Sascha and Franken, Lukas and Piatkowski, Nico},
  journal = {Machine Learning},
  pages = {1--29},
  year = {2024},
  publisher = {Springer},
  website = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10994-023-06490-y},
  selected = {true}
}
    Paper
  2. A Simple QUBO Formulation of Sudoku
    Sascha Mücke
    In Companion Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, Jul 2024
    BIB 
    @inproceedings{muecke.2024a,
  title = {A Simple {QUBO} Formulation of Sudoku},
  author = {M{\"{u}}cke, Sascha},
  year = {2024},
  booktitle = {Companion Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference},
  publisher = {{ACM}},
  pages = {1958--1962},
  doi = {10.1145/3638530.3664106},
  website = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3638530.3664106},
  selected = {true}
}
    Paper

2023

  1. Shapley Values with Uncertain Value Functions
    Raoul Heese, Sascha Mücke, Matthias Jakobs, and 2 more authors
    In International Symposium on Intelligent Data Analysis, Jul 2023
    BIB 
    @inproceedings{heese2023shapley,
  title = {Shapley Values with Uncertain Value Functions},
  author = {Heese, Raoul and M{\"u}cke, Sascha and Jakobs, Matthias and Gerlach, Thore and Piatkowski, Nico},
  booktitle = {International Symposium on Intelligent Data Analysis},
  pages = {156--168},
  year = {2023},
  organization = {Springer Nature Switzerland Cham},
  selected = {true}
}
  2. Feature Selection on Quantum Computers
    Sascha Mücke, Raoul Heese, Sabine Müller, and 2 more authors
    Quantum Machine Intelligence, Jul 2023
    BIB 
    @article{mucke2023,
  title = {Feature Selection on Quantum Computers},
  author = {M{\"u}cke, Sascha and Heese, Raoul and M{\"u}ller, Sabine and Wolter, Moritz and Piatkowski, Nico},
  year = {2023},
  journal = {Quantum Machine Intelligence},
  volume = {5},
  number = {1},
  website = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42484-023-00099-z},
  selected = {true}
}
    Paper
  3. Efficient Light Source Placement using Quantum Computing
    Sascha Mücke, and Thore Gerlach
    In Lernen, Wissen, Daten, Analysen, Jul 2023
    BIB 
    @inproceedings{muecke.gerlach.2023a,
  title = {Efficient Light Source Placement using Quantum Computing},
  author = {M{\"{u}}cke, Sascha and Gerlach, Thore},
  year = {2023},
  booktitle = {Lernen, Wissen, Daten, Analysen},
  publisher = {CEUR-WS.org},
  series = {{CEUR} Workshop Proceedings},
  volume = {3630},
  pages = {478--491},
  pdf = {https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3630/LWDA2023-paper42.pdf},
  selected = {true}
}
    PDF

2022

  1. Quantum Circuit Evolution on NISQ Devices
    Lukas Franken, Bogdan Georgiev, Sascha Mücke, and 4 more authors
    In 2022 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC), Jul 2022
    BIB 
    @inproceedings{franken2022,
  title = {Quantum Circuit Evolution on {{NISQ}} Devices},
  booktitle = {2022 {{IEEE}} Congress on Evolutionary Computation ({{CEC}})},
  author = {Franken, Lukas and Georgiev, Bogdan and M{\"u}cke, Sascha and Wolter, Moritz and Heese, Raoul and Bauckhage, Christian and Piatkowski, Nico},
  year = {2022},
  pages = {1--8},
  selected = {true}
}