Quantum Computing

Universities Space Research Association (USRA) today announced that DARPA has awarded the organization and its partners Rigetti Computing and the NASA Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (QuAIL) to work as a team to advance the state of art in quantum optimization. USRA, as the prime contractor of the award, will manage the collaboration.

The collaboration will focus on developing a superconducting quantum processor, hardware aware software and custom algorithms that take direct advantage of the hardware advances to solve scheduling and asset allocation problems. In addition, the team will design methods for benchmarking the hardware against classical computers to determine quantum advantage.

In particular, the work will target scheduling problems whose complexity goes beyond what has been done so far with the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA). USRA’s Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science (RIACS) has been working on quantum algorithms for planning and scheduling for NASA QuAIL since 2012. RIACS as the prime contractor will manage the collaboration between NASA QuAIL and Rigetti Computing.

The grant is a part of the DARPA Optimization with Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum program (ONISQ). The goal of this program is to establish that quantum information processing using NISQ devices has a quantitative advantage for solving real-world-combinatorial optimization problems using the QAOA method.

USRA has received a subaward from NSF, in team with Stanford, Caltech and Cornell University, to work on the prestigious 5-year program Expeditions in Computing. Collaborators include NASA, NTT, NII and Microsoft. This Expeditions award exploits unconventional computing architectures, called Coherent Ising Machines (CIMs), to solve a class of optimization problems. CIMs provide a platform to test ideas for computer engineering in the post-Moore's Law era. Next-generation CIMs also hold great promise to drive substantial practical advances in artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities in multiple fields. In addition, the unconventional memory format used by these machines may establish a pathway towards novel quantum information technologies. More info on NSF press release and Project Website.

An experience in the USRA-NASA-Google Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (QuAIL) at NASA Ames Research Center's Advanced Supercomputing Facility introduces graduate students to scientific opportunities in quantum information sciences and trains them to do research related to the most advanced quantum computing platforms. The program is funded by NASA, AFRL, USRA and NSF.

Students, which need to be enrolled in a Ph.D. program or have otherwise previous quantum computing research experience, are accepted to a 12-to-24 week program. Applications for Spring and Summer 2020 are now open, information and topics for this session are available at this link. Apply as soon as possible!

In support of the Resilient Information Sharing goal of the AF Science and Technology Strategy, and at the request of the AFRL/CC, AFIT is offering a short course on quantum computing, supported by USRA and NYSTEC. Designed primarily for AFRL researchers across the TDs working in areas other than quantum computing, it provides broad awareness of potential impacts quantum computing technology is likely to make throughout the R&D portfolio. Course development and delivery at various AFRL sites are supported by AFRL/RI through. The five-day course balances fundamental concepts, more applied discussion of the state-of-the art, and hands-on experience. Theoretical topics include superposition and entanglement, quantum gates and circuits, gate-based quantum algorithms, quantum annealing, and quantum error correction. Applied topics surveyed include quantum supremacy, quantum sensing and communication, simulation of quantum systems, and current AFIT research activities. Participants will receive hands-on experience with both quantum computer simulators and actual quantum computing platforms available through agreements with AFRL/RI and NASA Ames. Familiarity with basic concepts of linear algebra such as eigenvalues and eigenvectors is assumed, as is some experience with programming.

Today, in Utica NY, Dr. Davide Venturelli is presenting at the first international AFRL-SUNY workshop on Quantum Information Science the new USRA program in collaboration with NYSTEC. The event will feature international participation, the full agenda is available at this link.