Spring Applications Course

This 3-credit Spring experiential learning course takes Fellows beyond the theoretical knowledge provided in the Fall theory course and gives them hands-on experience with QIS and computing applications. The course provides insight into the applications of Math for QIS (oscillators, simulations, machine learning) and essential skills to perform research in QIS. The course uses the language of linear algebra to demonstrate quantum computation, where quantum states are represented by vectors in a linear space, qubits by linear combinations of orthonormal basis vectors, and quantum gates by unitary matrices acting on qubits. The course starts with an introduction to Python programming, followed by lectures and homework that teach usage of specific quantum computing packages and software development toolkits, such as IBM’s Qiskit and Amazon’s Braket. This part concludes with executing a quantum algorithm on an actual quantum computer through our partners’ cloud services. The second half involves team projects that reproduce or extend published research articles on various applied topics like option pricing in quantum computers, optimization problems, image processing, and quantum games. Projects are presented in lightning talks.