CyberTraining: Implementation: Small: Interactive and Integrated Training for Quantum Application Developers across Platforms

Along with the evolution of actual quantum computers from industry, like IBM, IonQ, Rigetti, and D-Wave, quantum computing research has rapidly grown in the past few years. However, the industry and academia lack mature and effective workforce training plans for cutting across multiple disciplines, the most relevant being physics, computer and information science, and electrical engineering.

The project aims to deliver a project-oriented training program that can assist the scientific research workforce development for quantum computing cyberinfrastructure and help foster broad adoption of quantum computing cyberinfrastructure to advance fundamental research. The proposed training program targets students and early-stage researchers, e.g., undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs, who are interested in quantum computing systems, quantum applications, cyber-physical systems, Quantum Physics, Quantum Chemistry, and quantum machine learning.

A long-term collaboration with DoE national laboratories will ensure broad adoption of quantum computing infrastructure by the research community to catalyze significant research advances and train professional cyberinfrastructure contributors to optimize the current hardware and software stack. The proposed cyber training programs will accommodate 80+ trainees participating in cutting-edge research projects each year.

These programs will expedite adopters and users to understand how to use the quantum computing cyberinfrastructure and enable them to advance research in CISE, BIO, ENG, and MPS' core areas.

This project builds upon existing knowledge, data, and tools to create tailored, high-impact, engaging, collaborative, and integrated training modules for quantum computing cyberinfrastructure research workforce Development. Three training projects are built upon the PI and co-PI's innovative research on quantum error characterization and modeling, visual analytics of the quality of the quantum hardware system and quantum compiler optimizations, and reliability assessment of the quantum applications.

Each training module will focus on one mini-project. With the aim to enhance the trainee's design and implementation capability, problem-solving skills, and critical thinking ability, the training modules will be delivered with multiple lessons on the background of the problem, literature study, data collection and processing, methodology, evaluations of the solutions, and hands-on experiments.

The deliveries of the proposed training program will include: 1) a new course on "ST: Fundamentals of Quantum Computing Systems"; 2) a project-based short course plus its long-term maintenance and support; 3) hands-on tutorials based on the training projects; and 4) multiple research topics for undergraduate and graduate capstone projects. The long-term goal of this project is to boost the adoption of new quantum computing cyberinfrastructure to multidisciplinary students and researchers from different STEM domains.

This award by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure is jointly supported by the Physics at the Information Frontier program in the Division of Physics within the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, the Division of Chemistry in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, the Division of Computing and Communication Foundations in the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate, and the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems in the Directorate for Engineering.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.