IIT Madras partners with IBM Quantum Network to provide Quantum Computing in India

IBM has now partnered with the IIT-Madras to advance quantum computing skills development and research in India.

With this partnership, IIT Madras joins around 180 members of the IBM Quantum Network across the globe. IIT Madras also became the first Indian institution to join the global community of Fortune 500 companies, academic institutions, startups, and research labs working with the IBM Quantum technology to advance quantum computing and explore business use cases.

Mr. Sandip Patel, managing director, IBM India, said, "We welcome IIT Madras to the IBM Quantum Network. This is an exciting time for us to work together and leverage each other’s expertise to drive breakthroughs in the field of quantum computing. The collaboration will open new avenues to work with industry partners to accelerate research, make quantum real and create a vibrant quantum ecosystem in India. We believe the joint work will contribute towards India’s National Mission on Quantum Technologies and Applications to grow and prepare India for the future, further advancing India as one of the global powerhouses in computing".

Dr. Anil Prabhakar, professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Madras, said, "This collaboration with the IBM Quantum Network marks an exciting new phase for our Center. It builds on our successful collaboration on quantum computing education last year and promises to open up new avenues and directions for research and innovation".

The Joint research on quantum computing will help a wide range of industries and disciplines, including materials science, finance, energy, machine learning, optimization, and even space research. The partnership helps IIT Madras to get cloud-based access to IBM’s advanced quantum computing systems.

IIT Madras Center for Quantum Information, Communication and Computing will use the IBM Quantum Services alongside the open source Qiskit framework to explore areas such as quantum error connections, quantum machine learning, quantum algorithms, quantum chemistry, and quantum tomography in order to advance and grow the quantum computing ecosystem in the country.

Qiskit Runtime is a software that runs on the IBM Cloud and uses classical computers to optimize workloads and then efficiently execute them on quantum systems on a large scale.

IBM and IIT Madras have a long association in education and research areas like AI and Machine Learning.