Quantum Enthusiasts Around The World Recount The Lasting Impact of the Qiskit Global Summer School
Compiled by Josie Kies and Ryan F. Mandelbaum
I wanted to take some time to pause and look back on the three weeks that made up the Qiskit Global Summer School. As the lab exercises and final project have come to a close, in many ways it feels like a significant chapter has ended in this first-of-its kind virtual quantum education experience.
As I reflect on these weeks, review the feedback from students, and catch up on my Twitter, I am truly overwhelmed by the sentiments and moments being shared. From the team I work with to the global community of students I have been lucky enough to connect with, this summer school has genuinely been a benchmark for me in so many ways, and witnessing its impact on every person involved (as well as myself) is something that I will carry with me forever.
For some background, I’m an events person — I am not a technical person, I am genuinely terrible at math, and while I may be a millennial, my computer skills are mediocre at best (I attempted to explore Java, and let’s just say I am still unclear on what the difference between Java and Javascript is. Are they the same thing? Interrelated? Are they even a thing anymore???). My passion lies in creating experiences, supporting incredible visions as they become tangible realities, and facilitating spaces that create connections and memories.
Yet, through a winding path of helping to host and organize different events in various industries, somehow and someway I have been lucky enough to become a member of the Quantum community, and work on the Qiskit Community Team at IBM.
All of that is to say, regardless of how much experience you have managing or attending events, transitioning to virtual space is hard! I had been on the Qiskit team for just over a year when the whole world was transformed by a global crisis and public spaces went from being physical to completely virtual. Not only did the months ahead become unclear and confusing for events in general, but as an industry and as collective humans, we just weren’t ready for this to happen. Helping a family member set up a webcam can still be a day-long experience, and even coworkers in an advanced and emerging technological field struggle to connect to a WebEx.
As we all worked together to navigate social distancing and the stress and worries we were confronting around the world, a determination came through on the team and across the community. Before I knew it, I was a part of the event planning and education team with the vision and shared mission to not only successfully connect in a virtual space, but also to provide hands on education and a full event experience to thousands of students.
Generally speaking, I’m one of those people that is eternally optimistic about what I myself, and we as a team, can achieve. With a combination of respect, collaboration, and passion, there is nothing that can stop a goal or ambition from being achieved. Yet, even I was nagged with questions and a shadow of doubt: could a virtual event really do everything a face-to-face event could? Could we actually sustain continued engagement, education, and interactions for two whole weeks with nothing but our computers? Would we be able to create anything valuable?
Weeks later now, the event is almost completely wrapped, and I’m blown away.
From Bangladesh to Portland, Brazil to Tokyo, and Johannesburg to New York, I have watched as students and mentors have come together to learn alongside and with the support of each other. High school students and doctorates are helping each other navigate current and future plans and suggestions for starting their path to a career in quantum computing. Physicists and programmers are collaborating over chemistry simulations.
It turns out — not only could we do it, but we DID! Confronted with an impossible situation, driven by passion for the community that is growing around quantum, the Qiskit Global Summer School has shown everyone — myself included — that even impossible situations, can be overcome, and we all still have the opportunity not only to interact, but also to have life-changing experiences and events in a virtual space.
This was a group that took a problem, and with shared passion, created an opportunity — an opportunity that was not wasted. As I reflect and think to myself “What can we do next?!,” I feel lucky to be a part of such an enthusiastic and supportive community, and I absolutely cannot wait to see what this leads to for everyone who participated, because I have no doubt that it will take them to incredible places!
Thank you to everyone for welcoming me here and working together across the board to make this achievement happen. — Josie Kies
I’m a recent chemistry and maths graduate from Sydney, Australia. I actually just finished my Honours year (a year of full-time academic research) where I designed analog quantum simulation methods for chemistry on trapped ions. I signed up for the Qiskit Global Summer School to learn more about digital quantum simulation; I find the field very exciting and this application of quantum theory quite beautiful.
Even with a bit of background, it’s been quite a whirlwind. Because of the scheduling and the difference in timezones, I had to catch up on the lectures and labs some hours after everyone else. That gave me a great opportunity to reflect on the teaching as well as the content — aside from STEM, my background and passion is in education (in particular, in equitable access to education). It’s striking to me that the Qiskit team has incorporated quality outreach, strong pedagogy, and academic rigour. That’s no easy feat.
I’ve also been struck by the nascent community — when I sat down to actually go through the content several hours after the actual lectures, there was a ludicrous amount to catch up on and scroll past on the Discord. Even then, it continued to hum along. I haven’t been as involved in the community as I’d hoped to be, but I’m planning on starting to contribute to Qiskit and will hopefully see some familiar faces there. Looking forward to it! — Sara Birch
I was born and raised in Lebanon and I am currently working and living in Munich. Being an industrial engineer and holding two minor degrees in mathematics and computer science, I am fascinated by the world of Optimization. As such, it is no surprise that I am interested in quantum computing, as it provides a whole new perspective for tackling optimization problems. The Qiskit Global Summer School was the best way for me to correctly embark on the journey into the quantum world. Not only did we cover quantum computing preliminaries, but also we understood and implemented the mathematics behind different quantum algorithms such as Grover’s algorithm and Shor’s algorithm. What also blew me away was how we built on the preliminaries to focus on superconducting qubits and quantum chemistry.
The summer school felt like a race l would never get tired of, trying my best to understand every bit of the lectures and submit all of the labs as soon as I got the chance. The highlight of these two weeks were always the transition from the frustrating “What Happened Here?” to the fulfilling “Ahh, Now I Get It!!” moments. After two weeks of intense lectures coupled with hands-on labs under the supervision of great instructors and the support of a worldwide and friendly community, I firmly believe that I am set to continue this journey specifically tailored towards quantum optimization algorithms. — Sara Kattan
I’m a Chemical Engineering Student at Enugu State University of Science and Technology in Nigeria. I’m also from Nigeria. My aim of attending the Summer School I’ll say was the same as why I am learning most programming languages, to understand the basics concepts and how it will be helpful in the field of Chemical Engineering.
So far, I went from a student without prior knowledge of quantum computing to having learned most of the basics: what a qubit is, how it’s different from a classical bit, what a state is, what a gate is, and all of that. Even though my learning progress was slow because I had no prior knowledge of it all, I would say I have achieved something. All of this is thanks to IBM, the mentors, and those who dedicated their time to making these two weeks an educative one.
I still have so much to learn before I can think about how to apply quantum computing to solving chemical engineering problems, but the learning has started and with the help of all the materials provided during the Summer School and the basic knowledge I garnered, I will continue on that path until I get to my destination. — Ifeanyi Okenwa
Having interned at IBM Q last summer, I was thrilled to see the talks I’d avidly taken notes on back then, now developed as a two-week course for thousands of students. I am very grateful for the amount of thoughtfulness and care that the Qiskit Events team put into organizing, creating lectures and labs, coordinating mentors, soliciting panelists, and the multitudes of other things they accomplished behind-the-scenes. The fact that there was a Discord server for the summer school, and that we could make channels on it to meet people eager to learn around the world, made the atmosphere more welcoming and eye-opening than any other massive online event I’ve ever participated in. When I made the #quantum-education channel, I hadn’t foreseen that the people I met in it would have an online meet-up, start a new Discord server called Quantum Universal Education, or build and make accessible quantum learning resources together. Ultimately, the reason I will cherish my memories at Qiskit Global Summer School is thanks to the people I met, learned from and with, and will keep in touch with for, I believe, years to come. — Lia Yeh
I work as a PhD student at IT University of Copenhagen. The focus of my research is on cryptographic protocols for multiparty computation and blockchain applications, but I am interested in many areas of computer science and its surroundings! Before the summer school, my knowledge of Quantum Computing came mainly from published works, and now that I have a basic, but more accurate, understanding of the ideas behind quantum computing, I would be happy to keep exploring this field and eventually integrate it in my research. The perspective I am fascinated the most by om quantum computing is a theoretical one — in particular the way it changed how we look at algorithms and by the associated generated knowledge in the field of complexity theory, such as ad hoc complexity classes. Beyond the theoretical aspects faced during the summer school, I will consider Qiskit as a great tool for both learning and doing research, since it allows me to easily visualize the quantum circuits I am building, and to simulate experiments with quantum devices. What else? Congratulations to the IBM’s team for organizing this and for pushing a bit further the limits of online education! — Lorenzo Gentile
I am a rising high school junior from the beautiful state of North Carolina. I decided to attend the Qiskit Global Summer School in hopes of broadening my knowledge on quantum computing, and to connect with the community. My biggest takeaway from this course was the lectures on quantum error correction. I’ve always struggled with this subject, but after the two lectures led by James Wootton, I feel more confident on QEC then I could’ve ever hoped for. I plan to apply my newfound knowledge by taking other advanced online quantum computing courses that I would’ve initially been hesitant to take before knowing what I know now. The whole experience has been amazing, and I extend my gratitude to those on the Qiskit team for making it possible. — Perry Newlin
Qiskit Global Summer School 2020 was an IBM effort to attract people across generations, across geographies to learn Qiskit and overall quantum computing. The name might suggest that it was targeted a bit more towards high schoolers, and I was expected that the content would be a little bit foundational in nature. In reality, it was way more than that. Starting from the basics , very quickly it elevated itself to the textbook crown jewels of quantum computing like Grover’s algorithm, Quantum Fourier Transforms, Quantum Phase Estimation, and of course Shor’s algorithm for factoring numbers. The first week ended with a spectacular session on quantum noise mitigation.
In the second week, we dug deep into hardware, pulse programming and finally in the last two sessions on quantum chemistry ending with the Variational Quantum Eigensolver. This was followed by an enriched discussion on quantum careers by experts from academia and industry. Each lecture session was followed by very instructive laboratory sessions.
In the third week the IBM Qiskit team ran an open challenge on VQE for Lithium Hydride which really ran home the message of the school to cover the full panorama in depth from theory to possible ground-breaking applications for humanity.
This was an amazingly enriching experience. Hopefully next time the program will have more in depth sessions on optimization and quantum machine learning with labs. — Abhijit Mitra
My name is Kathrin and I am a PhD student at the University of Freiburg and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics. I’m living in the south of Germany in the beautiful town of Freiburg. I attended the Qiskit Global Summer School because I just started my PhD in the field of quantum computing, and didn’t know much about it beforehand. I think the summer school was a very good start for my research in quantum computing. I learned so much about Qiskit and how to use it. My research is about quantum chemistry, so I am glad to have learned about this topic in the last two lectures and labs. And I hope that the participation in the final project will help me to gain more knowledge in this field as well.
What I really loved were the labs and the lab videos. Everything was so well explained. I loved that every question I had while working on the labs was already answered, because others had the same questions, or I really got fast help thanks to the Discord community and the mentors who were there around the clock. I think it was amazing that we all live in different time zones, but you could always find somebody who could help or was there to chat. I think the summer school was the best experience I’ve had for a long time. — Kathrin König
Other QGSS stories:
Entanglement of Qiskitters — L. Venkata Subramaniam
Here’s How I Taught a Quantum Computing Course to 5,000 Students At Once — Elisa Baumer
What are the career options in Quantum Computing? — Amol
My experience in Qiskit Global Summer School being a graduate student in physics — Victor Onofre
Why QGSS-2020 was a quantum breakthrough for me! — Hirmay Sandesara
Escuela Global de Verano sobre Qiskit 2020 — Claudia Zendejas-Morales
Quantum Computing Education Must Reach a Diversity of Students — Abe Asfaw
QISKIT Global Summer School 2020 — Wridh-dhi Som Karar
Qiskit Summer School gets more people learning Quantum Programming — Rusty Flint
All you need to learn Quantum Computing is Linear Algebra! — Anupamaray
How can I get started in quantum computing? — Rajiv Krishnakumar
Schrodinger’s Cat is Alive — Soham
QGSS 2020 — Beginners Golden Ticket to the Quantum World — Dipesh Dhayfule
Learning Quantum Computing with Thousands of Fellow Qiskitters — Salih Yanikgonul
Just another Qiskit Global Summer School 2020 experience (an honest review version) — Arunesh Sarker
Qftics Global Summer School Blog Post — Abhigyan Mishra
How I use Quantum to Make Tea — Radha Pyari Sandhir
IBM Global Summer School Experience — Saesun Kim
