Fully funded 3-year PhD Student (f/m/d) in Quantum Computing for Ground and Excited State Electronic Structure Calculations

Official job advertisement: Link

Background

Quantum computing offers the promise of significant speedups over classical computing, but its practical realization remains in an early stage. Key challenges include the limited number of qubits, as well as noise and decoherence, which significantly constrain the circuit depth and the complexity of computations. Moreover, efficiently leveraging the quantum hardware’s ability to encode exponentially large problem spaces, 2ⁿ with n qubits, for practical applications remains an open question. As fault-tolerant quantum computing is still a distant goal, there is an urgent need to design innovative, noise-resilient quantum algorithms capable of utilizing the currently available qubits to achieve quantum advantage in real-world use cases.

Project

In this PhD project, you will be part of the BMBF QuantumFutur Junior Research group, which is hosted by the Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS) of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) in Dresden and Görlitz, Germany. The group’s research project, qHPC-GREEN, aims to address the challenges of climate change and the imperative for a green energy transition. In your role, you will learn to design and develop synergistic high-performance computing (HPC) and quantum computing (QC) approaches to model quantum mechanical systems pivotal to biochemical and physical phenomena relevant to environmental and energy challenges. The research will blend theoretical pen-and-paper approaches and computational software and algorithm development for conventional and quantum computing hardware. In collaboration with relevant industrial partners, you will, in the end, run your novel approaches on state-of-the-art quantum hardware. You can find more information on the qHPC-GREEN project here.

Requirements

The specific form of the project will be customized to align with the specific expertise and interests of the selected candidate. An initial phase will be included to provide the required knowledge in electronic structure theory or quantum computing, as needed. Consequently, candidates from diverse scientific backgrounds are encouraged to apply. Key qualifications include coding experience (preferably in Python/Julia and C++ or Fortran), a strong mathematical foundation within a scientific context, and prior experience with algorithm development or implementation. Additional optional qualifications that will be considered favorably include experience in method or algorithm development related to second quantization, quantum chemistry/physics, ground- and excited-state calculations, quantum information, or quantum computing. However, we mainly seek a highly motivated, committed, and enthusiastic candidate.

Candidates are highly encouraged and welcome to suggest and pursue their own ideas within the general scope of ‘quantum computing for quantum chemistry.’ Students will gain highly sought-after skills valued in both industry and academia, including expertise in quantum algorithms, computational chemistry/physics, and software engineering, all within a collaborative and supportive environment. Additionally, the PI has a successful history in acquiring highly competitive third-party funding (Marie Curie, Vinnova, BMBF), and as such, we are also open and interested in assisting with future applications for competitive postdoctoral funding options.

About us

We are a newly established (since Dec. 2024) DRESDEN-concept Research Group at CASUS of the HZDR and the Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence Dresden/Leipzig (ScaDS.AI) at the Center for Interdiscip­linary Digital Sciences (CIDS) of the TU Dresden.

We are building the AI 4 Quantum research group that focuses on developing a synergistic HPC+QC approach aided by novel artificial intelligence/deep machine learning methods to enable the computational study of complex quantum systems relevant to the green energy transition. Additionally, our current research focuses on developing innovative quantum Monte Carlo methods and novel quantum computing algorithms to enable realistic electronic structure calculations for strongly correlated electron problems on high-performance computing hardware and near-term quantum computing devices. You can find more information about us, our research, and the PI here on our homepage.

We are dedicated to fostering a supportive, inclusive research environment encouraging scientific excellence. We welcome applications from individuals of all backgrounds and expressly invite members of underrepresented groups to apply.

If you are interested, please apply via the HZDR online application system found on the bottom of the official job advertisement: Link Only applications via the application system can be considered.

If you have any questions, please reach out to me via: email.