Talks

Monday (25/10)

• 11h - Quantum Algorithm for Multiobjective Optimization

Tuesday (26/10)

• 8h - NISQ Computers for Quantum Advantage (NISQA)
• 9h - Quantum algorithms for solving differential equations
• 10h - Quantum Singular Value Transformation: A Unified Framework of Quantum Algorithms

Wednesday (27/10)

• 10h - Quantum Computing Market Perspectives and Impact on Global Competitiveness

Thursday (28/10)

• 9h - Progress in photonic quantum computation
• 10h - Co-designing application specific quantum accelerators to HPC

Minicourses

Quantum Computing Introduction with Ket

4h. duration.

• Monday (25/10) from 9h to 11h
• Monday (25/10) from 16h to 18h

What is wrong with current quantum computers and how can we improve them?

2h duration.

• Thursday (28/10) from 8h to 9h
• Friday (29/10) from 8h to 9h

Introduction to quantum information using Qiskit

4h duration.

• Tuesday (26/10) from 4 pm to 6 pm
• Thursday (28/10) from 4 pm to 6 pm

Have you ever compose your team? The quantum computing hackathon is coming!

The teams will be composed of 3 members who will face 3 challenges with increasing degrees of difficulty, putting to the test what you learned during the event’s mini-courses!

It will be 24 hours of pure adrenaline! The challenges will be announced at 11am on 10/29 and teams will have until 11am on 10/30 to submit their solutions!

The promotion and awarding of the first three best placed teams will take place during the closing of the event at 12:00 on 10/30.

Further details about the event’s dynamics will be sent by email. Sign up!

Hackathon Rules (PT-BR) [pdf]

Progress in photonic quantum computation

Ernesto Galvão

Recently, there have been impressive demonstrations of small-scale quantum computers in various physical platforms. I will review some of the recent progress in the field, focusing on the use of photonic systems for quantum computation. I will describe boson sampling devices, which are a restricted type of photonic quantum computer, and outline possible paths towards scalable photonic quantum computation.

Presentation: [pdf]

Quantum Computing Market Perspectives and Impact on Global Competitiveness

Walmoli Gerber Jr.

The role of the physicist in society goes far beyond the academy. It is a duty of the physicist to promote his/her position in the labor market taking into account the real possibility of undertaking, mainly in the technology sector, once the tools, concepts and reasoning strategies worked out in the physics undergrad course enable technological development. There are numerous positions where the knowledge on physics has value and great delivery potential. Let’s address the quantum computing scenario and demonstrate a Brazilian case of entrepreneurship in physics. QuanBy is the first Brazilian startup focused on the development of digital technologies in quantum computing, with the goal of fostering the development of the quantum computing market in Brazil and offer technologies based on quantum computing and communication.

Co-designing application specific quantum accelerators to HPC

Bruno Taketani

IQM is focusing on a Co-Design approach where hardware and software are developed hand-in-hand. The resulting application-specific quantum computing stack can be seamlessly integrated into an HPC infrastructure, such that the quantum processor is utilized in an accelerator approach. To achieve this integration IQM is also building HPC-specific software and hardware tools. In this talk we will present these concepts and how collaboration with domain experts will drive us forward. We will also briefly explore possible paths to a career in the growing quantum computing industry.

Quantum Algorithm for Multiobjective Optimization

Marcos Villagra

In this talk I will discuss about constructions of quantum algorithms for multiobjective optimization. First I will present a heuristic technique based on Grover’s search algorithm. Then I will show how to embed a multiobjective problem into a Hamiltonian and use a quantum adiabatic algorithm to find a ground state encoding a Pareto-optimal solution. This talk will be base on these two papers: 1) Multiobjective Optimization Grover Adaptive Search. Benjamín Barán & Marcos Villagra. Recent Advances in Computational Optimization. Studies in Computational Intelligence, Vol.795, pp. 191-211, 2019, and 2) A Quantum Adiabatic Algorithm for Multiobjective Combinatorial Optimization. Benjamín Barán & Marcos Villagra. Axioms, Vol. 8, No. 1, March 2019.

Quantum algorithms for solving differential equations

Ashley Montanaro

Quantum computers are predicted to outperform classical ones for solving differential equations, perhaps exponentially. But will this really be the case? In this talk, I will describe recent work on quantum algorithms for solving differential equations of interest for practical applications. First, we consider a prototypical partial differential equation - the heat equation in a rectangular region - and compare the complexities of eight classical and quantum algorithms for solving it, in the sense of approximately computing the density of heat in a given region. It turns out that, for spatial dimension d <= 3, the quantum algorithms are slower than the best classical ones. For d >= 4, there is a polynomial quantum speedup using an approach based on applying amplitude estimation to a random walk. Second, I will discuss a quantum algorithm for solving differential equations of interest in mathematical finance, such as the Black-Scholes equation, more efficiently than classical methods. This algorithm is based on a quantum speedup of the multilevel Monte Carlo method.

NISQ Computers for Quantum Advantage (NISQA)

Enrique Solano

I will introduce quantum computing as an emergent field stemming from quantum physics and quantum information in the frame of theoretical and experimental physics, and how it has moved towards entrepreneurial worldwide activities. I will explain how it is possible to reach quantum advantage, meaning useful industrial applications, with current noisy intermediate-scale quantum computers, a disruptive concept we call NISQA. I will finally offer my perspective on the outstanding opportunities for developing scientific and entrepreneurial careers in quantum computing technologies.

Presentation: [pdf]

Quantum Singular Value Transformation: A Unified Framework of Quantum Algorithms

András Gylien

Quantum computing is powerful because unitary operators describing the time-evolution of a quantum system have exponential size in terms of the number of qubits present in the system. Quantum Singular Value Transformation is a generic algorithmic primitive which enables harnessing this exponential advantage by efficiently performing polynomial transformations to the singular values of a block of a unitary – generalizing the Quantum Signal Processing technique of Low and Chuang. The corresponding quantum circuits have a very simple structure, often give rise to optimal algorithms and have appealing constant factors, while usually only use a constant number of ancilla qubits. Many quantum algorithm can be cast as a singular value transformation problem, including Hamiltonian simulation, amplitude amplification, quantum walks and quantum linear algebra algorithms for machine learning. As such, Quantum Singular Value Transformation leads to a unified framework of quantum algorithms incorporating a variety of quantum speed-ups.

Quantum Computing Introduction with Ket

Evandro Chagas

In this minicourse we will introduce you to the basics of quantum computing from scratch and test them in the quantum programming language Ket. During the minicourse, we will use the quantum computing simulator KBW to look into quantum execution, something that is not possible using a quantum computer. We hope that all participants interact during the course, expressing their doubts and testing what they have learned. It is not necessary to have any previous knowledge in quantum computing to follow the minicourse. However, basics of linear algebra and Python programming will help you to accompany the minicourse.

pip install ket-lang kbw

sudo apt update -y
sudo apt install python3-pip -y 
pip3 install ket-lang kbw

python3 -m kbw

sudo snap install code --classic

Presentation: [pdf]
QAOA: [zip]

Part 1:

Part 2:

Introduction to Quantum Information Using Qiskit

Bruna Gabrielly de Moraes Araújo

We’re going to have a basic introduction to quantum information, quantum computing to the teleportation protocol and then we’re going to apply these ideas using the Qiskit tools and running some experiments using a real quantum computer!

Prerequisites, recommendations and tools needed to complete the short course.

Anyone who doesn’t know quantum mechanics or even programming might be able to follow the course.

It is recommended that everyone make an account at: https://quantum-computing.ibm.com

Notebooks: [zip]

Part 1:

Part 2:

What is wrong with current quantum computers and how can we improve them?

André Carvalho

In this short course we’ll discuss current limitations of quantum computers, the challenges faced when running algorithms on real devices, and how quantum control techniques can be used to improve hardware performance. We will introduce you to Boulder Opal, Q-CTRL’s product aimed at characterizing, improving and automating quantum hardware. Starting from an idealized model of a superconducting qubit hardware, you’ll learn how to add different layers of imperfections until achieving a reasonably realistic model of the system. You’ll be able to use this model to simulate the application of quantum gates on the qubit and to analyze, with the help of Boulder Opal’s visualization tools, the effects of imperfections on the final gate performance. We will then present different quantum control strategies to mitigate errors in the system, their advantages and disadvantages, and apply them to the realistic qubit model presented previously.

Parte 1:

Parte 2:

András Gylien

Caltech (EUA)

András Gilyén is a Marie Curie fellow at the Rényi Institute. His main research topic is quantum algorithms and complexity, with a particular focus on quantum linear algebra methods (quantum singular value transformation and the block-encoding framework), optimization, and quantum walks. András received his PhD in 2019 from the University of Amsterdam, where he was supervised by Ronald de Wolf and co-supervised by Harry Buhrman at CWI/QuSoft. Between 2019 and 2021 he was an IQIM postdoctoral fellow at Caltech, meanwhile he received the ERCIM Cor Baayen Young Researcher Award in 2019 and was a Google Research Fellow at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing in Berkeley during the “The Quantum Wave in Computing” program in the spring of 2020.

André Carvalho

Q-CTRL (Austrália)

Andre Carvalho is the Head of Quantum Control Solutions at Q-CTRL. He completed his PhD at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro before joining the Max-Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden as a postdoctoral fellow. He then spent more than a decade as a researcher at the Australian National University, where he worked across disciplines, bringing together expertise from physicists and engineers to develop control solutions for quantum technology problems. He has also worked as a senior research fellow at Griffith University. Andre has a vast international experience and is widely recognised for his contributions to the field of quantum control.

Ashley Montanaro

University of Bristol (United Kingdom)

Ashley Montanaro has worked in the field of quantum computing for 17 years, specialising in quantum algorithms and quantum computational complexity, and has published over 50 papers on this topic. He holds a PhD in quantum computing from the University of Bristol, supervised by Prof. Richard Jozsa, has been a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge, and is now Professor of Quantum Computation at Bristol. He holds an ERC Consolidator grant and was awarded a Whitehead Prize in 2017 by the London Mathematical Society. He served on the Steering Committee of the international conference on Quantum Information Processing (QIP) from 2016-19, and was a Founding Editor of the journal Quantum. He is co-founder of Phasecraft, a quantum software startup whose goal is to get the most out of near-term quantum computers.

Bruna Gabrielly de Moraes Araújo

The Institute of Photonic Sciences (Espanha)

Bruna has a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemical Engineering from Unicap - PE, a Bachelor’s Degree in Theoretical Physics at UFPE (Recife, Brazil) and at the University of Porto (Porto, Portugal). She also holds a Master in Physics where she worked with quantum logic theory in a single ion ion trap. She is actually a phd student in physics at ICFO,ICN2 &UAB. Thesis topic: Entanglement in many-body physics. She did an exchange at IBM Quantum from April to September 2021.

Bruno Taketani

IQM Quantum Computers (Germany)

Bruno did his Ph.D. at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, working with quantum optics and quantum information/computation protocols. He then followed with two postdocs at the University of Saarland (Germany), developing protocols and algorithms for quantum computation with ions and superconducting qubits. In 2016, Bruno started a professorship at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil, where he helped strengthen the efforts on quantum computation. Since Sept. 2020 he has been working at IQM Germany, where he leads the Algorithm and Applications team, as well as the efforts to integrate IQM’s quantum computers into HPC environments.

Enrique Solano

Kipu Quantum (Germany)
University of the Basque Country (Spain)
Shanghai University (China)

Prof. Enrique Solano got his Bachelor and Master in Physics at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, Perú. He obtained his PhD in Physics at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He realized postdoctoral research at Max-Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, Garching, Germany, and Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich, Germany. In 2000, he was appointed Professor of Physics at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, Peru. In 2008, he accepted the prestigious position of Ikerbasque Professor at University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain, and was director of the international center Quantum Computing and Quantum Technologies (QUTIS). In 2018, he accepted the position of Distinguished Professor of Physics at Shanghai University, Shanghai, China, where he has been the director of the international center "Quantum Artificial Intelligence for Science and Technology (QuArtist)". In 2019, he was appointed as Chief Scientific Officer of the AI company DeepBlue Technology based in Shanghai, China. In 2020, Prof. Solano occupied the position of CEO of IQM Germany. Since 2021, he is CEO of Kipu Quantum, boosting multiplatform modular codesign quantum computers.

Ernesto Galvão

International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (Portugal)
Federal University Fluminense (Brazil)

Ernesto F. Galvão is the leader of the Quantum and Linear-Optical Computation group at INL. He holds degrees in physics from the University of Oxford (PhD 2002), Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Master´s 1998), and Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (Bachelor´s 1996). He was a postdoctoral fellow at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (Canada) between 2002 and 2005 and is currently on leave from the Instituto de Física of Fluminense Federal University (Brazil), where he has been faculty since 2006. In his research he studies different quantum computational models to identify and quantify resources capable of achieving a quantum advantage in information processing. He is particularly interested in photonic implementations of quantum computers and collaborates with experimental quantum optics groups to implement and characterize these devices.

Evandro Chagas

Federal University of Santa Catarina (Brazil)

Evandro is a Master’s student in the Postgraduate Program in Computer Science at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, and has a degree in Computer Science from the same university. In his master’s degree, he developed the classical-quantum programming language Ket, which focuses on quantum cloud computing and the interaction between classical and quantum information. His research area also covers quantum computation simulation, where he developed new techniques that allow reducing the simulation time of certain quantum algorithms. Evandro is a member of the UFSC Quantum Computing Group, where he participated in the organization of all editions of the Quantum Computing Workshop.

Marcos Villagra

Universidad Nacional de Asunción (Paraguay)

Marcos Villaga received a PhD degree in theoretical computer science from Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan (March 2013). He was a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Sciences (JSPS) and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Fukui from April 2013 to March 2015. Since April 2015 he is a full-time research professor at the National University of Asunción, Paraguay. His research interests are computational and algebraic complexity, cryptography, quantum computing and information, combinatorial games, automata theory, and algebraic and spectral algorithms.

Walmoli Gerber Jr.

QuanBy Quantum Computing (Brazil)

• Prof. Eduardo Inacio Duzzioni, Phd. - Coordinator
• Prof. Jerusa Marchi, Phd. - Coordinator
• Prof. Gisele Bosso de Freitas, Phd.
• Prof. Paulo Mafra, Phd.
• Prof. Rafael de Santiago, Phd.
• Prof. Clovis Aparecido Caface Filho, Me.
• Caio Boccato Dias de Góes, Me.
• Evandro Chagas Ribeiro da Rosa, Me.
• Otto Menegasso Pires
• Eduardo Willwock Lussi
• Daniel Boso
• Gabriel Medeiros Lopes Carneiro
• Gilson Trombeta Magro
• Tomaz Souza Cruz