IEEE CIS Summer School 2025 — Speaker & Student Assessor

Date: 6 July 2025Event: IEEE CIS Summer School on Quantum Computational Intelligence (QCI)

#PhDJourney #QuantumComputing #QCI #CIS #Teach

I was invited as a key speaker at the IEEE CIS Summer School on Quantum Computational Intelligence, delivering Lecture 8: Introduction to Quantum Computational Intelligence. In the talk I outlined how quantum algorithms (like QAOA) and computational intelligence can meet in practice—covering core ideas, simple workflows, and the hardware‑aware angle from my PhD (e.g., FPGA‑friendly dataflow and classical optimisation strategies such as Bayesian optimisation for QAOA parameters).

Alongside the lecture, I served as a Student Presentation Assessor, evaluating group presentations across different age categories. It was inspiring to see diverse, well‑crafted projects—great communication, creative problem framing, and solid technical effort.

Highlights

• Clear interest in hybrid quantum–CI ideas and how to benchmark them fairly.

• Helpful Q&A on precision choices (fixed vs floating) and why memory/dataflow matter on hardware.

• Mentoring moments during assessment—focused feedback on problem statements, evaluation metrics, and next‑step experiments.

Why it mattered for my PhDTeaching the fundamentals helped me sharpen how I explain QAOA, hardware‑aware simulation, and optimisation loops to a broader CI audience. The assessment role also gave me a front‑row seat to emerging student directions—useful for shaping tutorials and future collaborations.

Thank you to the organizers and participants for the invitation, insightful questions, and engaging discussions. If you are delving into QCI, QAOA, or FPGA-accelerated simulation, I am eager to connect.