JUNIQ/EPIQ Summer School on Quantum Computing - Applications across Digital and Analog Architectures

1 Sept 2025, 09:00 → 5 Sept 2025, 17:00 Europe/Berlin

Building 16.4, Room 301 (Rotunda) (Forschungszentrum Jülich)

JUNIQ Team

The Jülich Supercomputing Centre will host the JUNIQ/EPIQ Summer School on “Quantum Computing – Applications across Digital and Analog Architectures” from September 1 to 5, 2025.
The school is jointly organized by the Jülich UNified Infrastructure for Quantum computing (JUNIQ) and the NRW-funded project Entwicklungspartnerschaft Ionenfallen-Quantencomputer (EPIQ), a collaboration between Forschungszentrum Jülich and the quantum start-up eleQtron from Siegen.

The program focuses on hands-on experience in developing and implementing algorithms across a variety of quantum computing platforms, including gate-based systems and quantum annealers. Participants will access quantum hardware via the cloud-based JUNIQ platform, which provides access to devices hosted at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre and through project partnerships.

These practical sessions will be complemented by lectures covering foundational concepts of gate-based and annealing systems, the design and implementation of real-world use cases, and broader perspectives on current trends in quantum computing. The lectures will be delivered by leading experts from academia and industry.

A poster session will give attendees the opportunity to introduce themselves, share their interests in quantum computing, and optionally present their own research.

Participation is free of charge, and the event will take place on-site only.

Topics: Introduction to Gate-Based Quantum Computing, Introduction to Quantum Annealing, Introduction to Quantum Simulation, Formulating QUBO Problems and Ising Hamiltonians, Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm, Emulation of Quantum Systems, Classical vs Quantum Optimization, Error Correction.

Participants are asked to prepare a poster about themselves, including their interest in quantum computing or current/past research. Please submit your CV, and a motivation letter stating why attending this summer school will be beneficial for your current and future research. Submit CV and motivation letter in one pdf file to training-juniq@fz-juelich.de with the header "Motivation Letter Summer School 2025". Your application will only be reviewed if CV, motivation letter, and application (follow the "apply now" button) are submitted.

Your registration will only be complete once we review and approve your application. A successful registration means you have been accepted into the school, and will receive further instructions regarding your arrival and stay in Jülich.

Registrations to open soon.

Monday 1 September

09:00 Registration

1 Welcome and Introduction to the JSC

Speaker: Gabriel Fazito (JSC)

2 Introduction to Gate-based Quantum Computing

Introduction to quantum bits and quantum gates
Programming and Simulating quantum circuits
Applications: QFT, Quantum Adder, QAOA

Speaker: Dr Dennis Willsch (JSC)

3 Introduction to Quantum Annealing

This talk is a general introduction to quantum annealing. It covers:
- how does a quantum annealer work in theory and what can it be used for;
- what are the theoretical and practical limitations;
- how to solve problems on quantum annealers, in particular D-Wave quantum annealers as the one hosted by JSC;
- the basic information about the architecture of D-Wave quantum annealers;
- how to formulate an optimization problem as a QUBO or Ising problem;
- different encoding strategies;
- how to incorporate constraints;
- how to embed a (logical) problem onto the given hardware graph (considering physical connectivity);
- how to send a problem to the quantum annealer using D-Wave's Ocean SDK and how to interpret the response;
Finally, some small examples are presented and the talk ends with a short hands-on exercise.

Speaker: Dr Madita Willsch (JSC)

12:30 Lunch break

4 Pen&Paper (Quantum Annealing)

Speaker: Dr Madita Willsch (JSC)

15:00 Coffee Break & Tour JUNIQ

Students will receive a guided tour to JUNIQ and be presented to the D-Wave system.

5 Quantum Computing with Trapped Ions

17:00 Ask me anything

An opportunity to ask questions and talk to the lecturers of the day in a more relaxed atmosphere.

17:30 JUDOOR & Leap

18:00 Finger Food Dinner & Socializing

22:00 Last Bus from FZJ to Jülich

Tuesday 2 September

6 QUBO Formulation and QAOA: A Tutorial on Encoding and Solving Combinatorial Optimization Problems - Part I

In this tutorial, we will dive into combinatorial optimization problems and explore how effectively encode these problems using the Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) formulation and how to tackle them using the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA).

Speaker: Dr Jhon Alejandro Montanez-Barrera (JSC)

7 Introduction of Hands-on Topics

In this session, the topics for the hands-on sessions will be introduced.

8 Hardware & Software Setup

9 Hands-on Session

12:00 Lunch break

10 QUBO Formulation and QAOA: A Tutorial on Encoding and Solving Combinatorial Optimization Problems - Part II

In this tutorial, we will dive into combinatorial optimization problems and explore how effectively encode these problems using the Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) formulation and how to tackle them using the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA).

Speaker: Dr Jhon Alejandro Montanez-Barrera (JSC)

11 Hands-on Session

12 Quantum Simulation

I will talk about the first experimental signatures of two-dimensional many-body false vacuum decay in a quantum material emerging from microscopic interactions. We used a programmable noisy superconducting quantum simulator with 2008 qubits in order to perform simulations corresponding to our specific experiment on quantum domain reconfiguration in a topical electronic crystal. We carefully chose a simulator with the same measured noise spectrum to ensure the fidelity of the model correspondence between the two systems, thereby presenting a realization of simulating real-world open quantum systems according to the original vision of Feynman.

Speaker: Dr Jaka Vodeb

16:45 Poster session

The first two groups of six will present their posters following a brief pitch.

Wednesday 3 September

13 Quantum Annealing Applications

Optimization Problems: Airline Scheduling, TSP, Garden Optimization
Constraint Problem: 2-SAT
Machine Learning Problem: Quantum Support Vector Machine
Sampling Problem: Quantum Boltzmann Machine

Speaker: Dr Dennis Willsch (JSC)

14 Hands-on Session

12:00 Lunch break

15 Introduction to Quantum Error Correction

16 Dynamical Decoupling / Error Mitigation

15:30 Aachen City Tour

Thursday 4 September

17 Entangling Gates across Quantum Computing Platforms

18 Hands-on Session

12:00 Lunch break

19 Hands-on Session

20 The Future of Quantum Computing

16:00 Poster Session

18:00 Finger Food Dinner & Socializing

22:00 Last Bus from FZJ to Jülich

Friday 5 September

21 Cooling to Compute: Millikelvin Cryogenics for Quantum Information Processing

Speaker: Dr David Rabanus (JSC)

10:30 Tour JSC/HPC & Cryolab

12:00 Lunch break

13:00 Feedback Session

14:00 Group Work Presentation

22 Wrap-up and Goodbye