Shortly

The first edition of QCourse570-1 comes with 3 ECTS credits (32 academic hours and 48 individual study hours), lasting four months from March to June, 2022.

During QCourse570-1, our students worked on projects individually or as groups, proposed by themselves. Each student presented at least five progress reports during the online sessions. Then, each individual or group prepared a manuscript of at least four pages for their projects. Lastly, each student presented their work at the end of classes.

Eight students successful completed QCourse570-1 working on seven different projects. Here is the list.

Welcome to our fully online and 12-week long graduate seminar course “Projects in Quantum”, conducted between March 1 and May 19, 2022.

The first edition of QCourse570 is available by the collaboration of QWorld and DF@LU (Faculty of Computing, University of Latvia) as a continuation of QCourse511-1. It is also a shared course through QTOM. Our course is supported by Unitary Fund.

Accreditation: QCourse570-1 is linked to the doctoral study program course DatZ7024 “Area seminar in computer science” by DF@LU.

This is a pass/fail seminar course for developing projects in quantum. Group work is encouraged. The study load is equivalent to 3 ECTS credits (32 contact and 48 individual academic hours).

The course is guided by the instructors, and peer discussions and feedback are expected during the online classes (contact hours). The online classes are held at 17:00 (UTC) on Thursdays between 90 and 180 minutes depending on the program of week.

Writing is the core activity of graduate studies, and so each student is expected to put her progress and outcomes in written form. This is one of the pedagogical outcomes of this course.

We will use a dedicated Discord server for the online classes and a dedicated Gitlab repo for the project managements. Each group will have a private channel on the Discord server for their internal discussions. We will use Google forms for collecting individual progress reports.

Contact: qcourse570 [at] qworld.net

Obligations and Plagiarism

We must all respect academic ethics and follow its rules. Each individual or group must present their own work, which is, of course built on the available work/literature. Any student involved with any form of plagiarism will be excluded from the course immediately.

Each student must join the Discord server, and she is responsible for following the announcements by the course team. Each student should use a Discord name including her first name or last name to be recognized easily by the course team.

Each project proposal must be completed by March 11, 2022 (more details will be shared). A project report must be prepared and submitted at the end, and each project must be presented at the end of class (more details will be shared).

The project details (group members, proposals, progresses, project reports and presentations, project outcomes, etc) will be publicly available. Each project must use some open-source or similar license(s) for the work developed during this course.

Expectations

Submission

As one of the pedagogical outcomes of this course, we expect each work should be prepared in a way that it will be submitted to some scientific events (workshops, conferences, science days, etc.). There will be the second edition of Quantum Science Days, and so, the students will have at least one available option. The acceptance of the work is not necessary, but the submission will be evaluated.

Unitary Fund

We encourage that, if suitable, a project should be prepared in a way that a microgrant (by Unitary Fund) application can be made based on the outcomes. Check the previous grants and FAQ on the Unitary Fund page to get some ideas.

Schedule & Grading

The projects are divided into two sections (A & B). Section A (Section B) will present on the odd-numbered (even-numbered) weeks.

It is a pass/fail course. Each person must collect at least 70 points to pass the course.

We use a simple grading system for each week:

• 0: no work/progress
• 1: little work/progress
• 2: enough work/progress
• 3: very good work/progress

Both group and individual work will be graded.

Basically, if each grade is 2, then the total grade will be 80, and it will be 180 if each grade is 3.

Certificate & Credits

Each successful student will receive a certificate issued by QWorld.

Earning credits from this course is up to the programs the students enrolled.

If your program administration requests, a signed document from the doctoral studies of Faculty of Computing (University of Latvia) may also be provided.

Applications

The applications are open to the students of University of Latvia, QCourse511-1 students who have submitted their term projects, and to the students coming through QTOM.

Project Proposals

A student is expected to find her own project or group. To get some ideas, click for the list of term projects developed during QCourse511-1.

It is not mandatory for QCourse511-1 students to continue with their term projects.

Here are some available project proposals.

qNLB Distillation Protocol Implementation

The project aims to develop an implementation of qNLB distillation protocol [1] on existing quantum hardware. Students are expected to first implement a software level simulation of the protocol and then move on to developing an implementation on current hardware.
Prerequisites: Working knowledge of programming using current quantum libraries and quantum nonlocality.
The project will be mentored by Jibran Rashid.
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.4622

Enumerating the Vertices of the Relativistic Causal Polytope

Horodecki and Ramanathan [2] provide a generalization of the no-signalling polytope based on relativistic considerations. This project will develop an enumeration and classification of the vertices of this new polytope, similar to the tripartite classification of Pironio [3].
Prerequisites: Prior knowledge of polytopes, experience with software such as porta, cdd etc. is recommended.
The project will be mentored by Jibran Rashid.
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09505-2
[3] https://arxiv.org/abs/1101.2477

Learning Convex Decompositions for Optimization

Convex decomposition and optimization problems abound in quantum information. We consider in this exploratory project application of recent machine learning techniques [4] for learning optimal convex decompositions of nonlocal correlations.
Prerequisites: Machine learning techniques, nonlocal correlations.
The project will be mentored by Jibran Rashid.
[4] https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.05736

Interactive Bronze

The aim of this project is making the tutorial Bronze more interactive by using jupyter-widgets, Javascript, and similar. The project will be mentored by Abuzer Yakaryilmaz, and up to 30 minutes weekly meetings will be scheduled. The students are expected to have experience or knowledge on interactive webpage and Javascript besides knowing the basics of quantum computing and programming and familiarity with Bronze. Some example deliverables: adding interactive self study exams, implementing quantum coin-flipping experiments, making quantum tomography interactive. The group size is 3-4 students.

Reverse engineering of quantum games

The aim of this project is applying reverse engineering to specific quantum games in order to understand the technical and conceptual details and then make them available for future quantum game developers. The project will be mentored by Abuzer Yakaryilmaz, and up to 30 minutes weekly meetings will be scheduled. The students are expected to have experience or knowledge of programming besides knowing the basics of quantum computing. The project will start with a quick literature review. Then, a list of games will be selected and then analyzed. More than one group can be formed, which will work separately. Each group size is 3-4 students.

Interactive Bloch sphere

The aim of this project is designing an interactive tool for visualize the state a qubit and manipulate it with the basic quantum operators. There are three different platforms, and each can be a different project: Jupyter notebooks, web application, and Unity. The project will be mentored by Abuzer Yakaryilmaz, and up to 30 minutes weekly meetings will be scheduled. The students are expected to have experience or knowledge of platform besides knowing the basics of Bloch sphere. Each group size is 3-4 students.

Team

Instructor: Abuzer Yakaryilmaz (QWorld & University of Latvia)

Members: Engin Baç (QWorld), Shantanu Misra (QWorld), and Jibran Rashid (QWorld)

Contact: qcourse570 [at] qworld.net

Code of Conduct

Our course is dedicated to providing a harassment-free teaching and learning experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), or technology choices. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any event venue, including talks, workshops, parties, Twitter and other online media. Event participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the course.

We respect the minors (children under age 18) and we must make every effort to protect their rights. All private relationships, private communications (including social media channels), or sexual contacts with minors are prohibited.

Except the filing the application form and similar formal procedures, the contact info of any attendee or participant cannot be requested by any person from organizer side (i.e., mentor, educator, speaker, organizer, sponsor, or volunteer). On the other hand, any person from organizer side may share his or her contact info with a participant who is not a minor, upon request by the participant.

A minor can access the emails of the main organizers on the event’s website. If a minor interested in working with a person from organizer side for scientific or pedagogical purpose, then he or she should read this document before contacting this person: https://qworld.net/code-of-ethics-and-conduct/#minors

If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact the course team immediately. For any concern regarding the course team, please contact the members of the Ethics Committee of QWorld. https://qworld.net/code-of-ethics-and-conduct/

Check the above link for more details.