For the third year in a row, The Coding School’s Qubit by Qubit and Sydney Quantum Academy (SQA) teamed up this May to host the Quantum Tech Camp for high school students in Dubbo, Australia. Comprised of in-person lectures and virtual presentations by some of Australia’s most notable quantum researchers, students gained insight into the foundations of quantum mechanics, the vast potential of quantum technologies, and prospective career pathways in the field.
Boasting a total of 52 participating high school students, 21 attended the camp in-person, traveling from various parts of Australia and Tasmania, while 26 joined virtually.
To help ensure equitable access and make the camp possible, the camp had two sponsors: IBM, who provided full tuition scholarships for 19 of the online students, and the New South Wales Department of Education’s Regional Industry Education Partnerships Program, who awarded a grant.
Qubit by Qubit instructor and curriculum designer, Tristin Rice, a Stanford University physics graduate, traveled from New York to lead the camp alongside Abhik Sarkar, a QISE PhD student at University of New South Wales. The two physicists introduced students to the foundations of quantum computing, diving into quantum algorithms and teaching students how to run online simulators through programming in Python.
Rice noted, “On the first day of the course, I asked the students to raise their hand if they were familiar with quantum computing. Not a single student raised their hand, or was confident that they could give a good definition of a quantum computer. By the end of the three-day camp, every student was able to code a quantum key distribution protocol in Cirq, one of Google’s open-source quantum programming languages, and answer conceptual questions about quantum mechanics.”
“The Second Quantum Revolution is going to have such a profound impact on nearly every field and students will be better off in any profession just by knowing about quantum computing concepts,” Rice emphasized.
To further showcase the impressive strides recently made in quantum research and to highlight all there is still yet to discover, virtual presentations were given by Professor Jingo Wang, Director of the Center for Quantum Information, Simulation and Algorithms at the University of Western Australia; Dr. Xanthe Croot, Chief Investigator of the Quantum Superconducting Circuits Lab at the University of Sydney; Professor Chris Ferrie from the Center for Quantum Software and Information at UTS; Dr. Linda Beaumont, Deputy Dean of Faculty of Science and Engineering of Macquarie University; and Dr. Luke Mathieson, Deputy Head of School of Computer Science at University of Technology Sydney.
High school student participant, Emelia, remarked, “The instructors and guest speakers were super inspiring and intriguing to me. While I had no idea how quantum computing could be applied to a career before this camp, they taught me the various ways it can be utilized in all my future opportunities and jobs. This definitely helped me figure out my future.”
If you’re interested in learning more about quantum computing, check out & apply to our quantum summer camps by visiting Qubit by Qubit or reaching out to info@the-cs.org.