LANL’s Second Annual Quantum Summer School Hosted Leading Quantum Experts and Companies

(ABQ.Journal) Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) Quantum Summer School program is aimed at building a global workforce capable of working on the computers of the future – quantum computers. The field is new and lacks researchers.
The second annual session just finished with a lecture by quantum computing guru Scott Aaronson from the University of Texas at Austin. The program, now in its second year, accepts students ranging from undergrad to doctoral programs from a variety of disciplines, including physics, computer science, engineering, math and others. Fifteen students out of more than 250 applicants were accepted this year – five more than for last year’s program.
Some of the world’s leading quantum computing experts have spoken at the school, including Peter Shor, known for Shor’s algorithm, a quantum algorithm for factoring large numbers exponentially faster than the best currently known algorithm running on a classical computer. The school also brings in speakers from big tech (Google, Microsoft and IBM) and small startup companies (IonQ, Rigetti and D-Wave), all of which are building their own quantum computers in a high-stakes competitive race. So the students get a taste of both the academic and the industrial side of quantum computing.