This spring marked the fourth iteration of the Quantum Information Practicum (EE522), the capstone course required for UW’s Graduate Certificate in Quantum Information Science and Engineering. Over 10 weeks, student teams tackled six projects proposed by faculty, industry and national lab partners, culminating in their participation in the UW ECE Engine Capstone Poster Session where teams presented their results.
This year’s projects spanned quantum error correction, quantum circuit compilation, and quantum advantage:
- Amazon: Exploring Quantum Error Reduction with Amazon Braket
- Microsoft: Benchmarking Tetron Arrays Using Random Circuit Sampling
- PNNL: Implementation of Extended Stabilizer Simulator for Erasure Noise Simulation
- PsiQuantum: Quantum Routines: implementation, Verification, and Resource Estimation
- Riverlane: Optimal Design of Evaluation Point in Error-Budgeting
- IBM: Active-Noise_Aware Qubit Mapping via Monte Carlo Tree Search and Reinforcement Learning
In the course, students work in small teams to design, build, and test solutions to real problems — giving them hands-on experience translating quantum concepts into working systems while collaborating directly with mentors from the field. Since the practicum’s launch, projects have been sponsored by organizations including Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Microsoft, Amazon, IonQ, IBM, Boeing, Atom Computing, and the Unitary Foundation, in addition to UW faculty. Check out all our past capstone projects.
The course is taught by Dr. Sara Mouradian. Those interested in participating in a future iteration, either as a UW graduate student or as an industry/lab mentor, can reach out to smouradi@uw.edu.