This 17-year-old works to make quantum mainstream – Indiatimes.com

Shraddha Aangiras was in the 8th grade when her father showed her a TEDx video of Shohini Ghose, a quantum physicist. Shraddha was immediately spellbound. I was really fascinated that something could be zero and one at the same time. I had been coding for a while by then, so I could wrap my head around most things, but with quantum, I couldnt. So she started googling more and more, and she landed upon articles that were easy to read. But I wanted to learn more. So, I downloaded this introductory book, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, because it was really preliminary. And when I opened it, I saw maths symbols that I had never seen before. Thats when the 8th grader realised she needed to up her maths game. So, in a year, she taught herself undergraduate maths and physics, only to realise at the end of it that she didnt actually need to know so much. I had learned a lot of theory but not the required industry skills I was aiming for. I realised I spent an entire year learning something that wasnt necessary. A clearer path for me to go ahead would have been great. Shraddha is now 17, and a student at RV PU Collegein Bengaluru, with one overriding mission make quantum computing more accessible to students. She partnered with One Million for One Billion (1M1B) under The Purpose Academy programme to start a quantum career accelerator programme called Quetzal that is open to all undergraduate STEM students in India. Shraddha presented her work on Quetzal at UC Berkeley recently. At Quetzal, well train undergraduate students across India in fundamental quantum computing for two weeks. This programme will have learning days as well as mission days. On learning days, well teach them through lectures, as well as hands-on labs, to ensure the students have an industry perspective. Mission days will be in between these learning days, to not onlytest how well students learn, but also to check their consistency, says Shraddha. The programme will then select the top students and connect them with quantum computing internships. The plan is to have two groups of a thousand students each, and to provide 100 internships. Engineering students who join the programme can expect to learn about qubits, quantum circuits and quantum algorithms. It will primarily revolve around learning Qiskit, IBMs open-source software development kit (SDK). Qiskit is great to have in your portfolio as an intern, Shraddha says.

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This 17-year-old works to make quantum mainstream - Indiatimes.com