October 13, 2020
Quantum Updates and Ideas
As we continue to celebrate Africa’s quantum tech talent we have Dr. Siphephile Ncube this week (tomorrow 10/14/2020).
A Physicist, Material Scientist, and Quantum Technologist, Dr. Ncube is the first African Researcher to successfully build a Nanoelectronic device from a network of magnetic nanoparticle modified carbon nanotubes. She is a PhD graduate from the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) and is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of the Johannesburg (South Africa) working on magnetism and related phenomena. Her main area of expertise is high-speed electronics for quantum computing applications. She has an amazing story to tell about how to find your passion and reach for the stars especially as a woman in quantum. In her own words, perseverance and resilience pay off in the end.
After her talk you will have an opportunity to ask questions before we have our one-on-one networking sessions (also not to be missed Virtual Cocktail Party). Make sure you sign up NOW!!!!!.
Quantum News
Conrad Haupt successfully advised a group of final-year students at the School of Electrical and Information Engineering (#witseie) supervised by Professor Ken Nixon. The students looked at error mitigation for quantum computing. Here is a video of their effort.
Amira Abbas from UKZN has been awarded a Google’s PhD Fellowship in the category of quantum computing. Also from Africa in machine learning is Jean Michel Sarr, Cheikh Anta Diop University (Senegal), in privacy and security Yunusa Simpa Abdulsalm, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (Morocco). See the full list here.
Congratulations to Qiskit Hackathon Global winners from Africa, Mohamed Yassine Ferjani (QTunisia) , Solomon Uriri (UKZN) (with 2 other team mates). Their project QiskitFlow is a platform for tracking, sharing and running quantum experiments in a clean and understandable way for developers, researchers and students manner. They will receive special support to complete this work and bring it on Qiskit. Here is their GitHub Repo.
I had the honor and privilege of being one of only 3 judges for this hackathon and the only IBM outsider and African.
I know there is a lot more happening that we miss. Please share your quantum news, challenges, successes and support with us via farai@estrapadus.com and we will share them with the OneQuantum Africa community. We love to celebrate with you or even help you to find a match or someone who can offer you support.
Signing off
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Looking forward to your feedback.
See you at www.onequantum.org for more networking, exchanging, and collaborating.
Farai