Call for Proposals-Cohort 2 under MeitY Quantum Computing Applications Lab (India)

Deadline: 30-Nov-22

Proposals are now being accepted for Cohort 2 under the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) Quantum Computing Applications Lab (QCAL) in association with the Office of Principal Scientific Advisor.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), in collaboration with AWS, has established MEITY Quantum Computing Applications Lab (QCAL). QCAL will help accelerate quantum computing led research and development and enable new scientific discoveries in the area of quantum technologies.

Objectives

The objective of the MEITY Quantum Computing Application Lab is to:

Accelerate India’s progress in quantum computing R&D including skilling.
Demonstrate social impact through cloud quantum computing technology by supporting experiments and development of prototype solutions across sectors such as financial services, chemical engineering, material sciences, agriculture and healthcare domains and others.

Focus Areas

Fundamental aspects of quantum computation and quantum information.
Exploration and building of quantum algorithms which test cases established with quantum simulators and run them in quantum hardware
Quantum machine learning
Optimization problems across many industries including telecommunications, supply chain logistics, and financial services.
Simulation of quantum systems with case-studies in broad applications e.g., design of new materials and catalysts, drug discovery, and the exploration of high-temperature superconductors.
The proposals should clearly call out the computation requirements and support sought. Each proposal will be evaluated by a committee, and credits will be offered subject to the recommendations of the committee.

Support Offered

The MeitY Quantum Computing Application Lab will provide credits to the approved proposal/projects to access to quantum computing hardware, simulators, programming tools (via Amazon Braket) and other AWS services at no cost. The credits granted for computing will allow researchers to explore and build quantum algorithms, test on quantum circuit simulators, and run them on different quantum hardware technologies. The credit will be provided as per the scope of the project/proposal and the recommendations from the committee.
Currently Amazon Braket provides access to four major quantum computing hardware – 1. Rigetti – Gate-based superconducting qubits 2. IONQ – Gate-based ion traps 3. OQC : Lucy – Gate-based Lucy and 4. DWave – Quantum annealing.
This call for proposal is limited to award free of cost access to quantum computing facility, for a certain period of time, basis estimates shared and the final decision of the committee at MeitY.

Tenure of the Project: 1+1 years

Eligibility Criteria

Academicians, Scientists, Technologists and other practicing researchers from recognized academic, research institutions, registered start-ups, and registered scientific societies. Collaboration between start-ups and academia is encouraged.
NOTE: A separate initiative is being worked out to allocate credits under this project for student’s learning purposes. Hence, student learning asks will be covered in separate call for proposal and will not be eligible under this call for proposal.