The Qiskit Global Summer School 2020 — My Quantum ‘Awakening’
An experience that made 2020 worthwhile.
It was early morning of 11th July 2020 (IST) when I got an email inviting me to register for the Qiskit Global Summer School- 2020, to be hosted and conducted by team Qiskit at IBM Quantum virtually and globally. I didn’t even blink until I completed the registration. It was a big opportunity for me as I had been struggling to understand the concepts since couple years. So, getting a chance to learn it from the experts at IBM was nothing less than a golden opportunity.
I got in the lectures as soon as I registered but there were few seats for the labs. It was mentioned in the email that the first 2000 people would get a chance to participate in the hands-on lab sessions. I registered and hoped to get a chance in the lab sessions. I started going through the pre-requisites that I thought I should have (i.e. linear algebra and QC basics). Although I struggled initially, but I pushed myself through it. I felt so motivated at the thought of getting this opportunity that even if it was required to climb the Mt. Everest, I would have gone for it.
… and … it happened! A week later, I got an email saying I got selected for the labs too. It was again an early morning email, and as soon as I read that, my happiness knew no bounds.
We were asked to join the Discord server for the summer school. The server was full of people from various backgrounds and the community was very helping. People from around the world asked questions whether related to the lectures, labs or their own quantum research, and the community answered them all, be it the Qiskit mentors, the volunteers or fellow summer school students. Even if someone tried to read through the existing questions-answers on the server (that I did mostly), most of the doubts flew away.
The summer school was from July 20–31, 2020. Two weeks with ten days of awesome learning in both lectures and labs, extra-ordinary community support at Discord servers and loads of Quantum concepts took me to my ‘Quantum Awakening’. I learned a lot more than I can express. If I pin-point the topics covered; In the first week, day 1 & 2 were focused on basics of quantum computing and the implementations of Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm and Grover search algorithm by Elisa Baumer; day 3 & 4 enlightened us with Shor’s algorithm including Quantum Fourier Transform and Quantum Phase Estimation by Abe Asfaw; and James Wootton took us through the nuances of Error correction on day-5. Week 2- day 6 & 7 were about Superconducting qubits by Zlatko Minev; day 8 & 9 were focussed on Quantum Chemistry by Antonio Mezzacapo and Abhinav Kandala; and on day 10 we got the chance to interact with an expert-panel discussion on Careers in Quantum Computing hosted by Amira Abbas. The panel included Jay Gambetta, Marina Radulaski, K. Birgitta Whaley, Steve Girvin, Monika Schleier-Smith, and John Preskill.
Apart from the quantum concepts, the simple yet effective way of teaching, the perspective of looking at a problem and the most important of all- the idea of helping each other grow have been the takeaways for me from the #QiskitGSS 2020. Just like all good things come to an end, QGSS too ended, and with a heavy heart we had to move on. But, what didn’t end was the enthusiasm of diving deeper in this field and exploring more; the community that got shaped during this summer school, and the craving of making a career in quantum.
After couple weeks, we all got our certificates. Everyone who attended the summer school got a participation certificate while the lab-students who completed the graded lab exercises successfully with a minimum score of 65% got a “Quantum Excellence” certificate also.
This summer school covered the content equivalent to a 6-month university course and was pretty comprehensive. IBM Quantum released the content from summer school in a much arranged manner for the world to learn about Quantum Computing. The lectures and labs can be found here. For anyone who is looking to start his/her quantum journey, must use these resources as a beginning point.
Looking forward to more such experiences! This is me signing off for now. Thanks for patiently tolerating a budding blogger.
