Third Quantum Computing Workshop takes theme of AI optimisation and forecasting

Invited guests at the session “Frontiers in Tech Roundtable: Bridging Science and Industry”. NUS President Tan Eng Chye (front row, fifth from left) was the Guest of Honour at the session. CQT Principal Investigator Patrick Rebentrost (back row, fourth from left) was a co-organiser of the workshop.

From 9 to 12 April 2024, the 3rd Quantum Computing Workshop was held at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Over 100 participants attended the workshop which had the theme “AI Optimisation and Forecasting across Industries: Digital and Quantum Computing”. The workshop focused on four industries: digital finance, energy, public health and transport.

CQT was a co-host of the workshop together with other NUS institutions – the Centre for Quantitative Finance, the Asian Institute of Digital Finance, and the Institute of Operations Research and Analytics – and Singapore’s Infocomm Media and Development Authority. CQT Principal Investigator Patrick Rebentrost was one of the organisers of the workshop. His co-organisers were Ying Chen, Associate Professor in the NUS Department of Mathematics, and Lim Kian Guan, Professor of Finance at the Singapore Management University.

Tutorial, talks and a visit

The workshop consisted of four sessions. The first session was a hands-on tutorial on quantum computing and algorithms. The tutorial, “Introduction to Quantum Computing & Financial Optimization with Qiskit”, was led by Dr Stefan Wörner from IBM Research Europe – Zurich, and had 105 participants. Two sessions were by invitation. They were a company visit to green tech startup Singrass SG, and the “Frontiers in Tech Roundtable: Bridging Science and Industry”.

On its final day, the workshop concluded with a series of talks by eight featured speakers with 136 attendees. Patrick gave a talk on the topic “Quantum linear algebra is all you need for Transformer architectures”, describing his group’s latest findings on the potential of quantum computing for large language models, the type of AI behind generative text services such as ChatGPT. The group’s work is available as a preprint.

Patrick holds co-appointments as Assistant Professor in the NUS School of Computing and Research Affiliate at the Asian Institute of Digital Finance. He also takes roles in coordinating cloud quantum computing access and working on applications of quantum computing with Singapore’s National Quantum Computing Hub.

Focus industries

Representatives from industries exploring advances in AI were represented at the “Frontiers in Tech Roundtable”.  The panellists came from organisations including Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, the multinational technology company ST Engineering and the National University Health system.

NUS President Professor Tan Eng Chye was the Guest of Honour for this roundtable. “The wealth of knowledge shared by the distinguished panel of experts was certainly insightful,” he wrote in a social media post after the session. “Let’s continue to work together and leverage on the transformative powers of AI and digital technologies to better improve lives and support economic growth across all regions.”