QIntern is the summer internship program of the QWorld Association, hosted by the QResearch Department. The goal of QIntern is to encourage and support collaborative work in quantum information science and technology, bringing together more experienced people (mentors) and those willing to learn more (interns).

In case of successful application, each intern is assigned to a project and gets involved into developing new software, education materials, or research results. The scope of the projects is broad and the mentors represent different areas of research and practice in the quantum world. Some internships may result in longer collaborations. 



Your summer at QWorld 


QIntern 2021 will be a seven-weeks program from July 1 till August 22.

As an intern, you will work remotely under supervision of a mentor. QWorld will provide the organizational support and communication platforms. Your internship will be an individual or a group project, depending on the topic and preferred mode of collaboration. 

In addition to acquiring new skills and professional experience, you will meet other interns and get acquainted with the QWorld community. QIntern2021 is a program that will help you find the right way into the quantum ecosystem. 



QIntern 2021 | Publications


Project no 6
Surface Code design for asymmetric error channel
U. Azad, A. Lipińska, S. Mahato, R. Sachdeva, D. Bhoumik, R. Majumdar
Read the preprint >

Project no 9
Eavesdropping a Quantum Key Distribution network using sequential quantum unsharp measurement attacks
Yash Wath, Hariprasad M, Freya Shah, Shashank Gupta
Read the preprint >

Project no 13
Music composition using quantum annealing
Ashish Arya, Ludmila Botelho, Fabiola Cañete, Dhruvi Kapadia, Özlem Salehi
Read the preprint >


Best projects and presentations

At the end of QIntern 2021, the jury evaluated the projects along with the presentation of the projects. Prizes were awarded in 2 categories, as follows.

For the projects:

  • The first prize went to the project Theory of Qubit Readout.
  • The second prize went to the projects Coherent Errors in Surface Code and Educational Material Development for Quantum Annealing.
  • The third prize went to the projects Reinforcement Learning Agent for Quantum Foundations, Satellite QKD Analysis and Modelling, and Implementation of space-efficient Variational algorithms for the Graph Coloring or Travelling Salesperson problems in Qiskit.

For the presentations:

  • The first prize was won by the project Educational Material Development for Quantum Annealing.
  • The second prize went to the projects Coherent Errors in Surface Code and Multi-photon transition in a single-electron spin-orbit qubit.
  • The third prize went to the projects Theory of Qubit Readout, Music Composition using Quantum Annealing, and Mapping the landscape of Quantum Games.

Get involved

If You are an intern, please fill the form below to join the event! Please make sure that you read and accept our rules available here.

The application form for interns >>

The consent for minors is available under the following links: RTF | PDF

Our call for project proposals is officially closed. If you are still interested in conducting a project under QIntern 2021, please contact organizers.


Projects

1. Reinforcement Learning Agent for Quantum Foundations

Mentor: Aritra Sarkar (Delft University of Technology, QuTech)

Interns: Adarsh Chandrashekar, Aleksandra Kowalczuk, Alvaro Rafael Gomez, Anaida Ali, Aniruddha Sharma, Arnav Arora, Bao Bach, Burak Uçar, Chow Wain Sein (aka) Aung Hein, Dhanvanth Balakrishnan, Hirokjyoti Dutta, Kashish Goel, Kaushal Kishor Gagan, Mertcan Abalı, Mostafa Shabani, Muhammad Usaid, Muhammed Adhil Pt, Parv Bhargava, Prachi Agrawal, Prateek Jain, Rishi Sreedhar, Santanu Banerjee, Sarang Gosavi, Siddharth Golecha, Soham Bopardikar, Suraj Pratap, Surya Embar, Swaraj Purohit, Tamal Acharya, Tan Jun Liang

Project description: The project involves using a universal AGI RL framework for simple experiments in QIT. The agents interact with the environment to model the quantum observables. 


2. Satellite QKD Analysis and Modelling

Mentor: Daniel Oi, Duncan McArthur, Jasminder Sidhu, Thomas Brougham (University of Strathclyde)

Interns: Akanksha Pandey, Akhil Gupta, Anand Nagesh, Angela Mary Stephen, Chirag Wadhwa, El bakraoui mehdi, Mayank Joshi, Prathamesh Bhole, Rishabh Singh, Riya Parikh, Sarthak Chakraborty, Sumit Chaudhary, Tanishqa Khanted, Tuğba Özbilgin, Valliamai Ramanathan

Project description: The Satellite Quantum Modelling and Analysis (SatQuMA) software allows for the analysis of satellite quantum key distribution. We are looking for interns interested in helping implement additional functionality such as integration of MODTRAN, AOtools, or the development of modules for different QKD protocols. 


3. Chaotic non-linear maps in entanglement distillation protocols

Mentor: Aurél Gábris (Czech Technical University in Prague)

Interns: Alejandro Gómez, Gerardo Suarez

Project description: Theoretical protocols for distilling maximally entangled pairs of qubits are a well-studied cornerstone of quantum communication. In our previous works we have shown that true complex chaos naturally arises in these protocols. The scope of the internship project would be to explore the properties of non-linear maps that arise in protocols involving entanglement in higher qudit states. The outcome of these studies may be interesting from practical point of view in certain optical quantum communication implementations. 


4. Theory of qubit readout

Mentor: Andras Palyi (Budapest University of Technology and Economics)

Interns: R K Rupesh, Zoltán Guba

Project description: Understanding the readout process in qubit experiments is a critical task, especially in the context of quantum error correction. The goal of this project is to set up and investigate physical models describing the readout process of specific qubit realizations. We will focus on semiconductor-based qubits, e.g., charge, spin and Majorana qubits.  


5. Coherent errors in surface code

Mentor: Janos Asboth (Budapest University of Technology and Economics)

Interns: Nikhil Londhe, Áron Márton

Project description: We aim to simulate numerically the effect of coherent errors on the surface code, using Fermionic Linear Optics as described by Bravyi et al [npj Quant. Inf. (2018)4:55]. This summer research project is to understand the theoretical approach, to reproduce the results of Bravyi et al, and to apply this formalism to a slightly different error model.  


6. Surface Code design for asymmetric error channel

Mentor: Ritajit Majumdar, Debasmita Bhoumik (Indian Statistical Institute)

Interns: Aleksandra Lipińska, Rijul Sachdeva, Shilpa Mahato, Utkarsh Azad

Project description: Recent roadmaps of research industries such as IBM, Google, IONQ etc. claim that a few error corrected logical qubits is at hand in next few years. All of these industries are looking into surface code for the error correction purpose, since this code requires interaction between adjacent qubits only, and hence is highly suitable for the current planar quantum architecture. A surface code is symmetric, i.e., it can correct an equal number of X and Z errors. However, in real world quantum channels, Z errors are much more probable (~100 times) than X errors. This has motivated many research on asymmetric error correcting codes, where the code can correct more Z errors than X errors. But such a study for surface code is not available yet. In this project, we shall design a surface code that can correct a single X error and two Z errors. We shall find the number of qubits required to design one logical qubit using such an asymmetric surface code, show the underlying circuit, and define the logical operators. Finally, we shall mathematically provide a lower bound on the number of qubits required to design a surface code which can correct upto tx X errors and tz Z errors.  


7. Quantum Computing with Spiders (ZX Calculus)

Mentor: Srinjoy Ganguly, Gopika Rao Chaganti (AdroitERA (AERA))

Interns: Jyoti Faujdar, Mahnoor Fatima, Maria Fernanda Velásquez Rolleri, Subhojit Halder

Project description: The spiders in the project title refers to the diagrammatic way of quantum computing known as the ZX calculus. The ZX calculus is a graphical language tool which can be used for complex quantum circuit analysis, quantum circuit optimization and simplification using ZX rewrite rules. The primary work in this internship will be to develop high quality educational materials for the ZX calculus as well code tutorials and code documentation for a software package called PyZX which is based on the ZX calculus. 


8. Quantum Natural Language Processing with DisCoPy

Mentor: Srinjoy Ganguly, Gopika Rao Chaganti (AdroitERA (AERA))

Interns: Antonio Jesús García Palomo, Avhijit Nair, Meriem Kasmi, Pooja M Hiremath

Project description: Quantum Natural Language Processing (QNLP) is an emerging field of research where we identify natural language to be quantum native and use the category theoretic and diagrammatic reasoning to perform natural language processing on quantum computers by translating sentences and meanings into quantum circuits. The work in this internship will involve developing intuitive and simple educational materials of category theory, diagrammatic reasoning and then making simple study materials for QNLP. Also apart from developing materials, interns would also have to develop code tutorials and code documentation for the QNLP library DisCoPy and t|ket> 


9. Sequential sharing of quantum resource of a single copy.

Mentor: Shashank Gupta (S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences)

Interns: Freya Shah, Hariprasad M, Yash Wath

Project description: We will investigate the possibility of multiple use of a single copy of a bipartite or multipartite quantum states for quantum resource contained in the state. A sequence of multiple observers perform unsharp or non-projective measurements acting independently of each other such that some quantum resource is left for the next observer. The choice of measurement settings for each sequence is independent and uncorrelated with the measurement settings and outcomes of the previous observers. The motivation is to obtain an upper limit on the number of observers that can share a quantum resource. This work will provide an efficient usage of the quantum resource and will be useful in secret sharing, security of quantum networks (if Eve eavesdropping is also non-projective or unsharp). 


10. Implementation of space-efficient variational algorithms for the Graph Coloring or Traveling Salesperson problems in Qiskit

Mentor: Zoltan Zimboras, Adam Glos (Wigner Research Centre for Physics, IITiS PAN)

Interns: Kareem El Safty (leading intern), Bartu Bisgin, Bhargav Das, Claudia Zendejas-Morales, Mostafa Atallah, Pinaki Sen, Turbasu Chatterjee, Vyron Vasileiadis

Project description: Recently new space-efficient versions of Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm appeared for the Graph Coloring or Traveling Salesperson that uses much less qubits than the standard one. In this project, we will develop software implementation for these new algorithms in Qiskit. 


11. Educational materials on variational quantum computing – QAOA scope

Mentor: Adam Glos (IITiS PAN)

The project was not initiated

Project description: In this project I plan to prepare educational materials on creating Ising model, implementing QAOA algorithm together with its variation GM-QAOA and Quantum Alternating Operator Ansatz. The whole project will be implemented with qiskit + jupyter notebooks. 


12. Educational material development for quantum annealing

Mentor: Özlem Salehi (IITiS PAN)

Interns: AkashNarayanan B, Manan Sood, Paul Joseph Robin, Sabah Ud Din Ahmad, Sourabh Nutakki

Project description: The aim of the project is to develop new material to teach quantum annealing (QA). The material will start with the theory behind (QA) and continue with examples. 


13. Music composition using quantum annealing

Mentor: Özlem Salehi (IITiS PAN)

Interns: Abbas Hassasfar, Ashish Arya, Dhruvi Kapadia, Fabiola Cañete Leyva, Ludmila Botelho, Vishal Sharathchandra Bajpe

Project description: We will investigate how quantum annealing can be used in the field of music theory focusing on music composition and music completion. There have been some previous work on using constraint programming for music composition. Our aim will be to investigate the relevant literature and formulate optimization problems in the domain of music theory. 


14. Quantum Foundations

Mentor: Jibran Rashid (IBA, Karachi)

Interns: Muhammad Ibrahim Jaffar, Samarjit Singh, Shantanu Misra, Vaishnavi Markunde

Project description: Introductory tutorial workshop style content on quantum contextuality and nonlocality. 


15. Multi-photon transition in a single-electron spin-orbit qubit

Mentor: Gábor Széchenyi (Eötvös University, Budapest)

Interns: Ashish k, Zoltan Gyorgy

Project description: In this work, we will theoretically analyze electrically induced multi-phonon dynamics in a single-electron qubit with Rashba spin-orbit interaction. As a main goal, we will optimize the parameters of the multi-phonon transition to reach higher efficiency for selective addressing of spin-based quantumbits in a multi-quantum-dot register. 


16. d-Wave optimizations for Supply Chain channels

Mentor: Vesselin Gueorguiev (Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship)

Interns: Daniel Salazar, Isaac Méndez Barquero, Mustafa Efe Güzel, Roberto Narvaez Hernandez, Victor Chang, Yusharth Singh, Shivani Mayekar, Sinem Serap

Project description: d-Wave is ideal for optimization of combinatorial problems that are often faced in Supply Chain channels of various industries  


17. Mapping the Landscape of Quantum Education Efforts

Mentor: Zeki Can Seskir (QTurkey)

Interns: Abhishek Manhas, Alizah Gul Memon, Bahudin Farooq, Bhoomika R Bhat, Elena Jin, Furkan Eşref Yazıcı, Hamna Aslam, Helin Geleri, Lorraine Tsitsi Majiri, Nethmi Sahajeewa, Parv Agarwal, Reuben Devanesan, Rishab Agarwal, Shisheer S Kaushik, Ozan Ergin, Sathvik Lakkaraju, Çağatay Üner

Project description: We’ll (together with the interns) map the efforts in quantum education, both global and local initiatives, ongoing projects, funding etc. If enough interns will show up, we can map the university level programs (B.Sc. – M.Sc. – Ph.D.) as well. 


18. Mapping the Landscape of Quantum Games

Mentor: Zeki Can Seskir (QTurkey)

Interns: Amesh Hazoor Kahloon, Anamaría García Hernández, Anant Sharma, Esra Uysal, Hitanshu Gedam, Hridey Narula, Uday Jadhav

Project description: Quantum games are a rapidly developing field. In this project I want to map the existing landscape of quantum games, and dive deep into the history of quantum games. 


19. QML for image processing

Mentor: Viratkumar Kothari, Devang Gajjar (Sabarmati Ashram Preservation and Memorial Trust)

Interns: Anurag Uday Kulkarni, Azza Fadhel, Pushkal Shukla, Rajatav Dutta, Rifatul Islam Himel, Riya Malani, Vishal Kumar

Project description: I am heading digital archives of one of the reputed archives on Mahatma Gandhi where I have quite a huge number of digital archival images. I want to process them using computer vision using machine learning to identify people in the images. I can do this using normal machine learning but I feel I should use Quantum Computing so that to make and process them for long future. 


20. QDM – Quantum Direct Messaging

Mentor: Saba Arife Bozpolat (Marmara University, Turkey)

Interns: Bibek Neupane, Bravish Ghosh, Ege Ozmenekse, Yasir Ölmez

Project description: We have a text message to send from A to B. We may do so using Superdence Coding and Quantum Teleportation by encoding the text message into qubit states. In this project we will attemp to build a prototype for a simple quantum direct messaging client using Superdense Coding and Quantum Teleportation protocoles. 


21. Solving Vehicle Routing Problem and its variants using quantum computing

Mentor: Paweł Gora (University of Warsaw)

Interns: Aabiskar Thapa Kshetri, Abhay Kamble, Akshay Masetty, Antonio Jesús García Palomo, Anuranjan Sarkar, Atharva Vidwans, Avi Roy Chowdhury, Erdem Yiğit Ertörer, Juan Santos Suárez, Kaustuvi Basu, Mansi Tarani, Meghashrita Das, Melvin Varghese, Mohammad Aamir Sohail, Nada Ahmed Elmasry, Pınara Evren Korkmazgil, Sebastián V. Romero, Shandirai Malven Tunhuma, Vibhanshu Gupta, Walid El Maouaki, Yash Upadhyay, Yogita Singh

Project description: Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is a combinatorial optimization problem important for real-world logistics and difficult (NP-hard) from a computational perspective. The goal is to find optimal routes of a fleet of vehicles aiming to visit some number of locations. There are different variants of VRP, e.g., with limited capacities of vehicles, time windows for visiting specific locations, multiple depots etc. All of them are interesting areas for applications of quantum computers. In previous works, my research group developed algorithms for solving some variants of VRP using quantum annealing (details in: “New Hybrid Quantum Annealing Algorithms for Solving Vehicle Routing Problem” https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-50433-5_42, the code is available in https://github.com/dwave-examples/D-Wave-VRP). Now, we would like to extend this approach to solve VRP with time windows (VRPTW) and tackle it using circuit-based quantum computing using Qiskit framework and algorithms like QAOA and VQE. 


22. Financial portfolio optimisation using Quantum machine learning

Mentor: Aurthur Vimalachandran Thomas Jayachandran (Samara Aerospace University)

Interns: Aakash, Abhinav M Hari, Akash Patel, Amaury de Miguel, Anuj Mehrotra, Anush krishna V, Celestine Ikoki, Dayitva Goel, Ege Bozdemir, Engin Bahri Baç, Gaurav Patel, Harpreet Singh Wazir, Harsh Kumar, Jay Kothari, Luis Arturo Estrada Grimaldo, Manish Singh, Manvi Gusain, Marija Šćekić, Mert Kaşif Ceylan, Milica Gazivoda, Mitesh Adake, Oluwakayode Olamoyegun, Rohit Kanteti, Shrey Biswas, Shreya Hardas, Sphoorthy Nadimpalli, Umer Yasin

Project description: The work involves in implementing quantum algorithms for optimisation financial portfolio. To reduce errors and improve accuracy for computing expected returns from assets. 


23. Quantum programming of quantum channels

Mentor: Fernando Rojas Iñiguez (Center.of. Nanoscience and Nanotechnology UNAM)

Interns: Abhishek Kumar, Abhra Puitandy, Saúl Yael Puente Ruiz

Project description: The evaluation of decoherence effect in qubits is a relevant topic of great interest in quantum information and quantum processing tasks. The aim of the project is to construct a family of algorithms based on the quantum circuit model to represent a general theory of qubits transformation to represent a general quantum channel (for example to describe depolarizing, amplitude damping and entanglement breaking channels among other). To implement the algorithms in a platform such as Qiskit, Cirq, C## to develop a library of quantum programs of qubit in noisy channels. Use the quantum computing programs either to study the physical properties of the quantum systems in the decoherence régime or to explores their use in a quantum information processing task, for example the quantum teleportation in noisy channels 


24. Quantum correlations beyond entanglement

Mentor: Fadwa Benabdallah (Mohammed V university in Rabat)

Interns: Asma Kacem, Ayan Kumar Ghosh, Basit Iqbal, Duaa Jamshaid, Gayathri B, Hayede Zarei, Huma Sabir, Ishit Ranjan, Javier Martínez, Kumar Nilesh, Muneeba Parvez, Nayana J S, Rashed Hussain Lone, Sahreena Imtiyaz, Soumya Sarkar, Tamal Ghosh

Project description: In quantum information and computation, the quantification and characterization of quantum correlation beyond entanglement in various quantum systems other than two qubits systems have attracted considerable attention and constitutes one of the main issues being intensively investigated in these topics. They are regarded as the central resource for the implementation of quantum protocols, including quantum teleportation, quantum sensing, quantum cryptography, and so on. In this sense, various measures of quantum correlations in bipartite and multipartite systems have been proposed, and their properties have been intensively investigated. For instance, the one-way quantum deficit, the measurement-induced disturbance (MID), and the quantum Fisher information. 


25. Quantum Inspired Optimization

Mentor: Muniraju Pulipalyam (Microsoft)

Interns: Chirag Bhansali, Komal Pandya, Nilay Awasthi, Ramy Harib, Shashank Kumar Roy

Project description: Understand and apply Quantum Inspired Optimization to real world industrial problems of students’ choice 


26. Quantum Computing for Music Composition

Mentor: Srinjoy Ganguly (AdroitERA – AERA)

Interns: Meghana Ayyala Somayajula, Nitya Devaraj, Sai Nandan Morapakula

Project description: It is a familiar concept that musicians and sound engineers rely a lot in various mathematical and scientific research to forage novel techniques which can help them to compose and generate novel music and sound patterns. This project is one of the first unique kind of project which is based on music composition using quantum circuits. Since this is a very new field, therefore, the aim of this project will be to utilize all the resources to construct invaluable educational tutorials and materials based on quantum computing for music composition. It is expected that students will be writing detailed coding tutorials and documentation for the execution of this project as well as get hands-on experience in using various platforms and software packages related to quantum computation for music. 


27. QAOA approach for particle tracking

Mentor: Adam Glos (IITiS PAN)

Interns: Komal Pandya, Chirag Bhansali

Project description: The goal for this project is to analyze the plausibility of applying QAOA for particle tracking problem, an important computation problem for particle colliders.



Timeline for QIntern 2021

June 07 May 30, Submission deadline for the project proposals of the mentors
June 08 June 04, Official announcement of the projects, application for interns is open
June 20, Application deadline for interns
June 21-23, Mentors introduce their projects to the applicants
June 24-28, 2021, Mentors may schedule longer presentations and meetings for further details, and recruit the interns
June 28, 2021, Deadline for forming project teams
July 1 – August 20, Main part of the QIntern program, social activities
August 21-22, Presentation of successful projects


Coordinators of the QIntern 2021

  • Adam Glos, adam.glos [at] qworld.net (integration with QKitchen)
  • ‪Zoltán Zimborás‬, zoltan.zimboras [at] qworld.net (scientific program)

We would like to thank Krista Pētersone for helping us with initiating the event.


QIntern Team of the QIntern 2021

  • Engin Bahri Baç
  • Yasir Ölmez
  • Shantanu Misra
  • Abu Sayeed Md. Nasif
  • Yusharth Singh
  • Aleksandra Lipińska