July 2-July 3, 2020 (1400-1800 CEST) Virtual

Q-SE 2020

First International Workshop on Quantum Software Engineering (Q-SE 2020)

co-located with ICSE 2020

Quantum computers promise to solve unthinkably complex problems that traditional computers could ever solve.The evidence of such quantum supremacy over traditional computers has started to emerge as it can be seen by Google’s quantum computer recently performing a complex computation that would take 10,000 years for the best supercomputer available today. High-level languages to write quantum programs have also started to appear, e.g., Microsoft’s Q# and IBM’s Qiskit. Thus, we believe that this is the right time to build a community for quantum software engineering (QSE) focusing on devising methods, approaches, and processes to develop software for quantum programs efficiently and to ensure their correctness. The Q-SE workshop will provide a platform for researchers and practitioners to discuss the challenges in developing software quantum software in high-level quantum languages, developing novel solutions to build correct methods for developing testing quantum programs, executing quantum software, developing best practices, and creating a research roadmap of quantum software engineering.

The key goals of the workshop are: 1) Provide practical and generalizable insights on how to apply and extend existing approaches to quantum software development or develop entirely new approaches, 2) Devise ways in which industry and academia can collaborate to provide further knowledge on developing quantum software, 3) Provide academia with feedback on which skills and abilities are required in quantum software development and where to concentrate on the education of students, 4) Demonstrate to academia new as well as existing practical challenges in the field of quantum software engineering, 5) Communicate the latest research findings to practitioners and discuss ways to adopt them for industrial products, services, and processes.

The key outcome of the workshop will be a research roadmap for Quantum Software Engineering.

Program


The program is listed below. Please note that the times are in CEST.

July 2

1400 to 1415: Welcome and Introduction (Chair: Shaukat Ali)

Keynote 1: (Chair: Shaukat Ali)

1415 to 1515: Software Engineering for Quantum Computing and Quantum Computing for Software Engineering by Marco Pistoia (JPMorgan Chase & Co.) , Video

Abstract: Leveraging qubit superposition and entanglement, Quantum Computing is paving the way for extremely efficient computations. The underlying quantum hardware is not yet capable of solving industrial-scale problems, but while quantum hardware providers are working at a very fast pace to achieve quantum advantage, the entire software engineering community is making incredible progress in building a new software stack for Quantum Computing, which, from the highest entry-point level down to the execution on quantum hardware, includes the cloud-based access layer, the applications layer, the algorithms layer, and the circuit compilation and optimization layer. This is an important time in the development of Quantum Computing because software engineers have the unique opportunity to shape the software stack by devising new quantum-specific programming languages, novel software principles, and hardware-independent circuit compilers and optimizers to give researchers the opportunity to move from one hardware provider to another with the highest level of flexibility. In this keynote, I will present an overview of the state of the art of Software Engineering for Quantum Computing. I will also address another topic, which is often overlooked: the reverse need for Quantum Computing to facilitate Software Engineering by addressing hard problems that developers have to face on a daily basis, such as reducing the complexity of static program analysis and using Quantum Computing for Machine Learning to reduce the number of the false positives resulting from static analysis.

Biography: Marco Pistoia, Ph.D. is Managing Director, Head of Research and Engineering at JPMorgan Chase & Co., where he conducts and leads research in various areas, particularly Quantum Computing. Formerly, he was a Senior Manager, Distinguished Research Staff Member and Master Inventor at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York, where he managed an international team of researchers responsible for Quantum Computing Algorithms and Applications. He is the inventor of 210 patents, granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and 285 patent-pending applications, 26 of which are in the area of Quantum Computing. Dr. Pistoia received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from New York University in May 2005. He has written two books and over 80 scholarly articles on various aspects of Program Analysis, Language-Based Security, Software Engineering, and Quantum Computing. Dr. Pistoia has been the recipient of several awards, including five Best Paper Awards (three ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Awards at the ACM ISSTA 2007, 2011 and 2014 conferences, respectively, a Best Paper Award at the ACM IUI 2017 conference, and an Honorable Mention at the IEEE VL/HCC 2017 Symposium). Dr. Pistoia has lectured at numerous universities worldwide, including Harvard, MIT, ETH Zurich, The Royal Society of London, Israel Institute of Technology, University of Maryland, Dartmouth College, University of Porto, and École Normale Supérieure.

Papers Session 1: (Chair: Tao Yue)

1530 to 1600: Luís Soares Barbosa, Software engineering for ‘quantum advantage’ Video

1600 to 1630: Shahin Honarvar, Mohammad Reza Mousavi, Rajagopal Nagarajan, Property-based Testing for Quantum Programs in Q# Preprint, Video

1630 to 1700: Thomas Gabor, Sebastian Feld, Hila Safi, Thomy Phan, Claudia Linnhoff-Popien, Insights on Training Neural Networks for QUBO Tasks; Preprint, Video

1700 to 1730: Carlos A Perez Delgado, Hector G. Perez-Gonzalez, Towards a Quantum Software Modeling Language Preprint, Video

July 3

Keynote 2: (Chair: Rui Abreu)

1400 to 1500: From qubits to Quantum Accelerator - The Full Stack Vision by Koen Bertels (University of Porto, Portugal) , Video

Abstract: Quantum computing is a very popular topic even though we still have quite some distance to travel before anything useful will be available. However, there is a lot of work that can be done by other scientific and even industrial fields. The main important topics to work on are all focused on developing a prototype of a quantum accelerator that can be connected to a normal computer and execute the quantum gates. We have been working on the full stack of a quantum computer but given the state and lack of quality of the quantum bits, called qubits, we think it is much more interesting to focus on the development of quantum algorithms that execute functionality that is important for the scientific or commercial partners. This talk will therefore explain the full stack and also illustrate what is already available in the public domain to help others start developing applications and even test the micro-architecture and a powerful quantum simulator that will be needed to execute the algorithm.Given the context of the conference, I will give examples with respect to the software and programming aspects.

Papers Session 2 (Chair: Rui Abreu)

1515 to 1545: Tom Krüger, Wolfgang Mauerer, Quantum Annealing-Based Software Components: An Experimental Case Study with SAT Solving Preprint , Video

1545 to 1615: Shaydulin, Caleb Thomas, Paige Rodeghero, Making Quantum Computing Open: Lessons from Open-Source Projects

1615 to 1645: Thomas Gabor, Leo Sünkel, Fabian Ritz, Thomy Phan, Lenz Belzner, Christoph Roch, Sebastian Feld, Claudia Linnhoff-Popien, The Holy Grail of Quantum Artificial Intelligence: Challenges in Accelerating the Machine Learning Pipeline Preprint , Video

1645 to 1715: Carmelo R. Cartiere, Formal Quantum Software Engineering: Introducing the Formal Methods of Software Engineering to Quantum Computing Preprint, Video

1715 to 1800: Discussion on Q-SE Roadmap Development , Video

Call for Papers

Topics of Interest

Quantum software engineering including but not limited to:
• Paradigms for developing quantum software
• Quantum software design
• Quantum software testing
• Quantum software verification
• Quantum software coding practices
• Quantum software reuse
• Quantum software experimentations
• Quantum software execution
• Industrial applications
• Empirical evaluations

Paper Submission

We invite submission of papers of the following types:
- Regular papers (6 pages): Experience reports, research methods, longer challenge papers.
- Position paper (3 pages): Describing a well-argued position in any area of quantum software engineering.
- Fast Abstracts (2 pages): Work in progress, challenges

Submission Link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=qse2020

ICSE 2020 workshop proceedings will be prepared by IEEE CPS and published by ACM. Workshop papers must follow the ACM formatting instructions (https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template).

The workshop will have the best paper award, which will be announced and bestowed at the workshop closing session.

Organization

Program Chairs

Shaukat Ali, Simula Research Laboratory, Norway
Rui Abreu, Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) of the University of Lisbon, Portugal
Tao Yue, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Aerospace China and Simula Research Laboratory Norway

Program Committee

Paolo Arcaini, National Institute of Informatics, Japan
Anastassia Marchenkova, Bleximo
Carmelo Cartiere, NEXTSENSE SRL
Hausi A Muller, University of Victoria, Canada
Diego Moreda, Rodríguez IBM
Xiaodi Wu, University of Maryland, USA
Joao Fernandes, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Wolfgang Mauerer, Siemens AG, Corporate Research and Technologies, Germany
Anila Mjeda, Lero, Ireland
Marco Pistoia, IBM
Luís Soares, University of Minho, Portugal
David White, The University of Sheffield, UK
Andriy Miranskyy, Department of Computer Science, Ryerson University, Canada
Jianjun Zhao, Kyushu University, Japan
Jingyue Li, NTNU, Norway

Venue

As part of ICSE 2020, the workshop will be held at Seoul Dragon City Hotel located right in the center of Seoul..

Registration

Authors and participants must register through the main conference website: Registration for ICSE 2020