Indian Institute of Technology, IIT Madras, announced its collaboration with IBM on quantum computing education and research. IIT Madras faculty, researchers, and students will get access to IBM’s quantum systems.
Tech giant IBM announced on Monday that it will provide top-tier institutions of India over-the-cloud access to its quantum systems. The collaboration will help in developing the curriculum to prepare students for careers in Quantum Computing. This will allow these institutions to work on actual quantum computers and program these using the Qiskit open-source framework.
The selected institutions’ faculty and students will be able to access IBM quantum systems, quantum learning resources and, quantum tools over IBM Cloud for education and research purposes.
Some of the Government initiated programs are Quantum Enabled Science and Technologies and National Mission on Quantum Technologies and Applications.
The Quantum Computing Laboratory at IIT Madras will host undergraduate and postgraduate courses and better prepare them for a career in quantum science and technology
It also provides them with resources in order to enable quality educational experiences. “The program offers multiple benefits like additional access to systems beyond IBM’s open systems, pulse access on the additional systems, priority considerations when in queue and private collaboration channels with other educators in the program,” read an IBM press release.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, India supported IIT Madras in various large initiatives for Quantum Computing education. Some of those initiatives are Metropolitan Area Quantum Access Network and the Centre for Field Programmable Photonic Gate Arrays.
IBM states that an estimated 100-150 students annually are expected to benefit from this collaboration that enables them to do advanced projects, work on algorithms, and use cases.
The importance of Quantum Technology, Prof. Anil Prabhakar, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Madras, said, “Quantum computing offers the opportunity to solve computationally intractable problems. IIT Madras has played a leadership role in the quantum key distribution, having demonstrated distributed phase reference QKD at distances up to 150 km. Our researches are backed by patents on the quantum random number and heralded photon generation.”
IIT Madras introduced the Interdisciplinary Dual Degree program on Quantum Science and Technologies (QuEST) in July 2020.