IIT Madras India’s First Academic Institution To Join IBM Quantum Network

IIT Madras has become the first academic institution to join IBM Quantum Network. This landmark development will help the institution augment the advancement of quantum computing skills development and research in India.

The announcement puts IIT Madras in an elite category of over 180 organisations that have the capability to tap into the IBM Quantum Network, a global community of Fortune 500 companies, startups, academic institutions, and research labs working with IBM Quantum technology to advance ‎quantum computing and explore practical applications. The ecosystem will provide IIT Madras access to a fleet of more than 20 quantum computers over cloud.

The IBM Quantum Network provides organisations with quantum expertise and resources through cloud-based access to the most advanced universal quantum computing systems and technology stack available today. It also fosters a growing quantum computing ecosystem which is based on IBM’s open source, quantum software and developer tools.

During a media address, Sandip Patel, Sandip Patel, MD for India and South Asia, IBM said, “As a member of the IBM Quantum Network, IIT Madras will get cloud access to IBM's most advanced quantum computing systems and IBM's quantum expertise. We will jointly explore quantum’s practical applications and realise the wide-ranging benefits of this technology for business and society”. 

This new development will help IIT Madras’ Centre for Quantum Information, Communication and Computing (CQuICC) focus on advancing core algorithms in research areas like Quantum Machine Learning, Quantum Optimisation, and applications research in finance. They will use IBM Quantum services alongside the open-source Qiskit framework to explore areas such as quantum algorithms, quantum machine learning, quantum error correction and error mitigation, quantum tomography, and quantum chemistry, and to also advance and grow the quantum computing ecosystem in the country.

On joining IBM Quantum Network, Dr Prabha Mandayam, associate professor, Department of Physics, IIT Madras said, “Becoming a part of the IBM Quantum Network will provide our faculty direct access to state-of-the-art quantum hardware and software. It enables us to use our interdisciplinary expertise to tackle some of the challenging problems in the domain of quantum computing today. In short, it gives us a unique opportunity to play an active and direct role in this quantum revolution of our times”.

Last year, IIT Madras joined IBM’s Quantum Education Program to provide its students and faculty access to IBM, quantum learning resources, quantum tools, and quantum systems for education and research purpose. It also collaborated with the IBM quantum team to deliver one of the highest registered courses on the topic of quantum computing, which attracted 10,000 participants in 2021.