Blog by David Karpuk: QDOC kick-off - PhD students enthusiastic at the prospect of achieving real quantum advantage in the near-term

Espoo, Finland, 26 March 2025
I had the pleasure of speaking at the Quantum Doctoral Program Pilot (QDOC) Kickoff event, hosted by InstituteQ, at Dipoli in Otaniemi on March 11-12. It was a fantastic opportunity to introduce QMill to graduate students and professionals in Finland's extensive network of universities, research institutions, and industry partners in the quantum computing landscape. And it was nice to see such enthusiasm at the prospect of achieving real quantum advantage in the near-term.

QDOC is a pilot program for PhD students in anything quantum, funded by the Research Council of Finland and several host institutions. It has attracted domestic and international talent to Finland's excellent graduate programs, and the breadth of topics studied by the students underscores the far-reaching implications of realizing quantum advantage. I was impressed by the 50+ student posters, on subjects ranging from cybersecurity to quantum hardware development and chemistry to logistics.

Achieving meaningful quantum advantage requires us to prove that a quantum algorithm solves the problem we claim it does, and to prove that it does so faster than any known classical algorithm.Both of these questions are fundamentally mathematical in nature, so as a mathematician it’s fantastic to work in a field which requires genuine mathematical ingenuity.And there was no lack of ingenuity at the QDOC event – many of the student posters addressed quantum computing at the algorithmic level.

The kickoff event showcased the dynamic and bustling quantum ecosystem here in Finland, but also underscored the importance of QMill's mission - to bring the kinds of research results achieved by the QDOC students to practice in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era. And personally, I'd like to express my gratitude to the event organizers from InstituteQ, and to everyone interested in our work here at QMill. Hoping to see everyone at the next QDOC event!