In this episode of The Quantum Kid, Kai and Katia explore one of the biggest questions of our time: Can quantum computing help the environment and make our world just that tiny bit more sustainable? They’re joined by two legendary scientists: Dr. Steven Chu, Nobel Laureate in Physics and former U.S. Secretary of Energy, and Professor Peter Shor, inventor of Shor’s algorithm, the discovery that sparked the modern era of quantum computing.
In this Qubits & Coffee webinar, quantum researcher Dr Unnati Akhouri walks us through the building blocks of quantum computing using Python and Qiskit. You’ll learn:
how quantum gates such as X, Hadamard and CNOT work,
how entanglement is created,
why SWAP operations are costly, and
how neutral-atom quantum computers can reduce the number of operations needed to solve complex problems.
Along the way, Unnati demonstrates quantum circuits in Qiskit, explores qubit connectivity, introduces Rydberg blockade physics, and shows how neutral-atom architectures can offer powerful advantages for optimization and graph problems. Topics covered: quantum gates (X, Hadamard, RX and CNOT), Bell states and entanglement, SWAP gates and circuit costs, Qiskit programming examples, neutral-atom quantum computing, reconfigurable qubit architectures, Rydberg blockade, Maximum Independent Set optimization
