Quantum@SUN

On Monday, July 17, 2023, the Quantum Stellenbosch group had the privilege of hosting Dr. Matthias Troyer, a Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft Quantum. Dr. Troyer delivered an insightful presentation focusing on “Practical Quantum Advantage” and shared the latest progress in quantum computing by Microsoft.

Dr. Matthias Troyer is a quantum scientist at Microsoft Research. He is responsible for architecting Microsoft’s quantum computer and applications. He joined Microsoft in 2017, and his work is focused on accelerating scientific discovery globally through the benefits of a scaled, fault-tolerant quantum system while ensuring security and responsibility in its applications. Before joining Microsoft, he held a position as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Tokyo and later returned to ETH Zurich as a Computational Physics professor.

Achieving Practical Quantum Advantage

During his talk, “Disentangling Hype from Reality: Achieving Practical Quantum Advantage,” Dr. Matthias Troyer emphasized the need to discern the real impact of quantum computing amid various speculations. He highlighted that quantum computers excel at solving large computing problems on small data, particularly in chemistry, materials science, and related fields. These game-changing solutions hold immense potential for designing better batteries, new catalysts, and quantum materials, and addressing climate change. However, it is essential to consider superquadratic speedups to overcome the inherent slowdowns in quantum systems compared to classical computers. To achieve practical quantum advantage, Dr. Troyer outlined key requirements: fault-tolerant quantum computers scaling to millions of qubits, tools for developing quantum algorithms, and a focus on small data/big compute problems.

In recognition of his contributions to the field of quantum physics and computational physics, Dr. Troyer has received prestigious awards. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and has been honored with the Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics and the Rahman Prize for Computational Physics.

Prof. Francesco Petruccione was recently awarded the title of Cavaliere della Stella d’Italia, a prestigious Italian honour.. The accolade, presented by the Italian ambassador on Italy’s Republic Day, recognizes Petruccione’s significant global contributions to theoretical physics.

For the full press release, please follow this link.

One of the Ph.D. students of the Quantum Research Group of Stellenbosch University, Abbas (Omid) Hassasfar, recently attended the Eleventh Annual NYUAD International Hackathon for Social Good focusing on Quantum Computing held at the New York University Abu Dhabi in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirate.

The quantum hackathon took place on April 27th – April 30th, 2023, and in partnership with IBM, NYUAD Center for Quantum and Topological Systems, Technology Innovation Institute (TII), Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA), qBraid, QWorld, NiEW, the MIT’s iQuHACK, and others.

This event was in person at the NYUAD campus over 3 days with nearly 200 students representing 56 universities from 24 countries. Professors around the world nominated their top students and Abbas was the only participant from a South African university in this event.

This exciting program was a collaboration aimed at bringing together students from different fields such as computer science, physics, and electrical engineering, and also technology experts, from different countries to foster a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship to solve a real-world problem and focus on the useful advantage (supremacy) of Quantum computer.

During the three days, participants worked in 15 different teams to suggest a problem and solution related to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) using a quantum computer and showing a quantum advantage. 

We are proud to report that Abbas Hassasfar (who participated as a student/mentor in this hackathon) and his team won third prize for their project “Focus on Good Health & Wellbeing” which helps medical professionals with the early detection of malignant tumors in patients using quantum machine learning.

The experience was extremely motivating, allowing the students to cooperate with other specialists in the area, learn about the most recent breakthroughs in quantum computing, and work on projects with real-world implications. They also made long-lasting friendships with other participants and had a great time visiting Abu Dhabi.

The student expresses his gratitude to NiTheCS and New York University Abu Dhabi for providing him with this opportunity and looks forward to attending similar events in the future.

The event wraps up with a prize-giving: https://sites.nyuad.nyu.edu/hackathon/index.php/teams/
https://sites.nyuad.nyu.edu/hackathon/

The Stellenbosch University students, Dean Brand, Abbas (Omid) Hassasfar, Matt Lourens, Amy Rouillard, Donovan Slabbert, and Gerhard Woithe, recently attended the ICTP – Quantinuum Quantum Hackathon held at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy. This event brought together 90 students from 23 different countries, with the aim of collaborating and creating novel solutions to real-world problems using quantum computing. The event was co-organized by ICTP and Quantinuum, a quantum computing company behind the open-source software TKET.

The first four days of the workshop comprised lectures and tutorials given by various experts on quantum computing, quantum error correction, quantum chemistry, and one of the highlights, ZX-calculus. During the final two days, participants were tasked with working in teams to create solutions for 18 projects supplied by Quantinuum and industry partners such as Merck, Eni, and BMW, covering areas such as chemistry, natural language processing, and error correction. We are proud to report that Abbas (Omid) Hassasfar and his team won second prize for their project titled “Quantum Krylov Method” which was related to the application of quantum computing for quantum chemistry. Event wraps up with a prize-giving.

The experience was incredibly enriching and inspiring, providing the students with an opportunity to collaborate with other experts in the field, learn about the latest developments in quantum computing, and work on projects with real-world impact. They also formed lasting connections with other participants and enjoyed exploring the beautiful city of Trieste. The students express their gratitude to NiTheCS and ICTP for providing them with this opportunity and look forward to attending similar events in the future.

What a day: 4 preprints in the arXiv!

Congratulations to Shivani Pillay, Ian David, Rowan Pellow-Jarman and Shane McFarthing for submitting their first preprints to the arXiv:

Hybrid Genetic Optimisation for Quantum Feature Map Design R Pellow-Jarman, A Pillay, I Sinayskiy, F Petruccione

Digital Simulation of Single Qubit Markovian Open Quantum Systems: A Tutorial , IJ David, I Sinayskiy, F Petruccione

A Multi-Class SWAP-Test Classifier, SM Pillay, I Sinayskiy, E Jembere, F Petruccione

Classical Ensembles of Single-Qubit Quantum Variational Circuits for Classification, S McFarthing, A Pillay, I Sinayskiy, F Petruccione

Prof Uwe Jaekel (Hochshule Koblenz, University of Applied Sciences) is visiting Stellenbosch University from 31 January to 5 February 2023.

Prof Jaekel is one of the speakers at the 2023 CHPC-NITheCS Summer School on Theoretical and Computational Sciences.

On Friday, 3 February, he will deliver a Colloquium on the topic ‘Solving nonlinear classification problems with a complex valued almost linear perceptron”.

It was great to have some of my UKZN students visiting in Stellenbosch and join the local team.