Quantum Computing: New Horizons and Opportunities

 

Quantum Computing: New Horizons and Opportunities, an episode of Tech Talk Series 2022 was organized on the 28th of January, 2022 on Google Meet. IEEE Students Branch, IOE Pulchowk has been conducting the Tech Series since past years and this was the continuation of the series. It is due to COVID-19 that the sessions have been conducted online.

 

The episode was presented by Dr. Dibakar Sigdel who is a Qiskit Advocate and Co-founder and Lead Scientist at Vitally Health, California USA. He is a Physics Major and has been contributing to the field of Quantum Computing with his knowledge and expertise. This event was arranged and coordinated by Mr. Pawan Sharma Poudel, Former Vice-Chair at IEEE Students Branch, IOE Pulchowk. Great thanks to Mr. Bikash Adhikari, Media Manager for successfully hosting the event, and to all organizers and participants of the event.

 

The event was engaged in by 250+ participants, through Google Meet and Facebook live. Dr. Sigdel started the session with a brief introduction to Chemoinformatics, Bioinformatics and Neuroinformatics and led the beauty of the fields to the depths using Quantum Computing. He described how Chemical Network and Machine Learning can be utilized for Drug Manufacture and testing. Quantum Chemistry describes that the atoms while forming a molecule have their electrons in the superposition state and this state of superposition also varies between the shared and unshared electrons. The qubits represent the quantum state of the electrons or fermions present in the bond. Dr. Sigdel later showed the realization of the VQE(Variational Quantum Eigensolver) Algorithm to describe the stable state obtained upon the superposition formed by the reaction of two atoms. 

 

Quantum Computers allow us to find out if a compound reacts with the other compound or not without needing to allow them to react physically in a laboratory.

 

Quantum Computing contributes to Bioinformatics to observe the molecular reactions and bio mechanisms. Dr. Sigdel presented that the study of a certain molecule and the way it responds to a disease can aid biologists and lab scientists to control diseases. He mentioned we can be able to cure cancer by studying at the cellular level. Billions of activities do undergo in every cell at a nano instance. RNA copied from a gene may not be the same, modifications do happen or it may remain the same during the reaction. This information is stored in the transcriptomics layer. 

 

During the later part of the session, he highlighted the present development scenarios of Quantum Computer by companies throughout the world including IBM, D-Wave, Google and more. Quantum Machine Learning was also introduced to give basic insights on Data Encoding, Model Development and Quantum-Classical Integration.

 

At the end he highlighted the present hurdles that are limiting the efficiency of a Quantum Computer. Noise reduction and error correction is one of the hot topics in Quantum Computing and many researchers are into it to obtain the best out of this scientific mastery.

 

This was a successful and one of the most fruitful events of our series. The review conducted after the event allowed us to find that the participants learnt alot from the event and asked us to organize more of these events in the future.

 

Here is the link to the recording of this session.

 

https://fb.watch/l9A39iZ5B2/?mibextid=Nif5oz