QPCC: A Quantum Programming Course for Inhomogeneous Cohorts of Professional Learners
Emil Dimitrov, Conor Dunne, Venkatesh Kannan, Karthik Krishnakumar, Pablo Lauret Martínez de Rituerto, Pablo Suárez Vieites, Rajarshi Tiwari, Richard A. Wolf · 2023
The ongoing accelerated development and exploration of Quantum Computing (QC) - systems, software, algorithms and applications - has generated a huge amount of interest and need among a wide range of organisations and user communities to better understand the technology paradigm, its maturity, limitations and opportunities, and positioning alongside classical high-performance computing (HPC) methods and tools. This interest and need to learn about QC has been accentuated by the rapidness and breadth of developments in QC that is being disseminated in both mainstream and specialist scien-tific/technical media as well as the accessibility to early quantum computing systems and tools. It has become a challenge for the (potential) user community to sift through the material catering to developing bottom-up fundamental scientific/mathematical skills as well as top-down exploitation oriented knowledge. As the National and one among the European Competence Centres in HPC, the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) has worked with an international advisory board composed of quantum computing technology developers, the user community and the Irish State Agency's network that is responsible for national enterprise skills development in ICT to create and deliver a blended course which is customisable, modular and stackable, thereby offering different learning path-ways to professional learners from the academic, enterprise and public sector communities with inhomogeneous backgrounds. Particular emphasis is laid on the stakes of engaging learners and organisations with different knowledge basis, skills and learning objectives, as well as making the content suitably-positioned and approachable to all (e.g. varied levels of mathematical knowledge required for basic understanding of quantum computing versus developing quantum algorithms). In this paper, we discuss the Quantum Programming Certifi-cation Course (QPCC) by summarising the 4-year design process with the advisory board, drawing from ICHEC's experience in national and European HPC and QC R&D projects as well as preparation of strategies and joint white papers, and methods to address gaps between mainstream academic programmes in quantum technologies and existing training courses (such as MOOCs, tutorials, workshops). We discuss the approaches in QPCC to target professional learners from inhomogeneous backgrounds, tools and pedagogical approaches in preparing and delivering the training material, opportunities and challenges in positioning QPCC within the academic framework, and sum-marise open opportunities for developing collaborative solutions.