Hello quantum enthusiasts,
The last session of 2020 is now available on YouTube (see the link at the bottom)! It has been an honour to be on this learning journey with you, in a year that has been so difficult for everyone on many levels, including; personal and professional. Yet, despite all the challenges, COVID-19 has created the opportunity for virtual knowledge sharing on an unprecedented scale:
Research talks that were once only accessible to in-person closed circles, has now largely moved online and become more accessible. This created a massive opportunity for people around the world to learn and inspire from research without necessarily being collaborators of the authors!
There has been a mass increase in online introductory courses to quantum computation (QC). Indeed, the motivation for us to start the quantum formalism course was that it came to our attention (initially via social media) that most of these popular QC courses de-emphasised and skim through the mathematics. We also found that a lot of these courses, although well-intentioned, give a far greater emphasis to the 'mysteries of quantum mechanics', whilst focusing on quantum programming aspects that result in trivial projects.
Do we want talented people stuck programming toy algorithms? Or do we want them to have the mathematical knowledge so that they are capable of using mathematical novelty to design and implement next-gen quantum algorithms?
In our view, if we want the raw talent around the world to one day to become some of the leading contributors to new ground-breaking algorithms and/or new theories, then there is no way around diving deeper into the mathematics. As such, we created the foundation module of quantum formalism to give the aspiring QC innovators exposure to the relevant baseline mathematics wherein they can build the confidence to dive deeper into the mathematics by themselves. We also look forward to delivering more advanced courses to the community sometime next year.
With this, I wish you all a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!
Best wishes,
Bambordé