Leveraging Open Source Tools to Teach Quantum Computing Foundations: Bridging the Future Workforce Gap in the Quantum Era
Radana Dvorak, Farzin Bahadori · 2024
The advent of the post-quantum era introduces significant challenges and opportunities, particularly a pressing workforce gap in quantum computing education and skills.In response, public and private stakeholders are actively enhancing their efforts to advance quantum education.For instance, IBM's recent pledge to upskill 30 million individuals by 2030 specifically emphasizes quantum computing and cryptography.Similarly, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the U.S. National Science Foundation, have engaged in quantum education discussions at a summit that brought together leading educators and professionals in Quantum Information Science and Technology (QIST) to strategize on future workforce development.Additionally, NIST is gearing up to unveil its post-quantum cryptography standard in the near future.Despite these efforts, collaboration across sectors in aligning quantum education approaches needs more focus.As experienced educators and researchers, our observation is that while cybersecurity education has witnessed extensive collaboration across government, industry, and academia, quantum education in some sectors is not receiving the attention as highlighted by government initiatives.We propose a systematic approach, leveraging established frameworks like NICE, to integrate quantum computing education into mainstream curricula to ensure that industry will not have the large gap of filling jobs as the cybersecurity sector is currently experiencing.We present an analysis of two courses introduced in our CS department: "Introduction to Quantum Computing," and "Quantum Computing II."We outline the course modules specifically crafted to heighten students' quantum awareness and curiosity as they will be confronted with opportunities and issues related to quantum computing in their software engineering careers.Our student survey results, utilizing a Likert scale ranking, indicate a significant increase in students' interest and curiosity in quantum concepts, as well as their eagerness to further explore quantum computing.These results that we are meeting our educational objectives.