The Xanadu Residency Program is a prestigious internship where students from all over the world come to the Xanadu HQ in Toronto to spend 4 months doing cutting-edge research and development in quantum computing. This highly competitive program receives hundreds of applications every year, and only a select few are chosen by our researchers to take part in this life-changing opportunity.
So who are the Residents, what do they learn at Xanadu, what’s this top-notch Residency Bootcamp you might have heard of, and which secret ingredient are our researchers looking for in future Residents? Let’s dive right in and take a sneak peek at one of the most coveted summer research programs in quantum!
The journey for the 2024 Residents started between September and December 2023, when they first submitted their applications (there are only a few months left until the 2025 Residency applications open again!). After several rounds of review, interviews and assessment, our supervisors chose their 2024 Residents based on their previous experience and their fit with the projects their teams had planned for 2024. Their summer stay in Toronto has now finally started with an exciting Bootcamp program: team introductions, social activities, lectures by top Xanadu and PennyLane researchers, and the first steps into the research projects that they’ll be working on for the next few months.
The 7 Residents chosen this year are currently studying at the University of Toronto in Canada, the Technical University of Munich and the Johannes Gutenberg University Meinz in Germany, the Institute for Corpuscular Physics in Spain, and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Excellent talent worldwide! Five of the Residents are pursuing PhDs, while two of them are Masters students — with some awesome completed projects.
Having a small cohort of Residents chosen directly by each supervisor allows the supervisors to dedicate an important amount of time to their Residents, and being a Xanadu Resident means that you get to work closely with the experts who are shaping the field of quantum computing every day. This isn’t a coffee-run internship, the things Xanadu Residents learn and the connections they make are truly invaluable.
The first learning opportunity is the Residency Bootcamp, which this year took place from May 6th to 10th. During their first week in Toronto, the Residents got to learn about quantum optics, quantum error correction, Xanadu’s specialized software libraries such as MrMustard, FlamingPy and PennyLane, but also quantum chemistry, quantum machine learning theory — and even code review and software development best practice. This is a unique chance to learn directly from the experts in their respective fields. Can you imagine learning from Filippo Miatto, Guillaume Dauphinais, Soran Jahangiri, Christina Lee, Alvaro Ballon, Ilan Tzitrin, Juan Miguel Arrazola, and Nathan Killoran? Truly a world-class experience!
As you may have guessed, the first week was intense. Aside from learning and getting to know some of Xanadu’s experts, Residents were also challenged to build a project that will eventually make it into PennyLane or different Xanadu software — they get to apply the theory and learn practical skills right at the start of the program. After this week of intensive learning and connecting with new people, the Residents are ready to hit the ground running and take on their Residency projects at full speed.
They will now spend the rest of the summer working directly with their supervisors on the project that they were selected for. But not before some celebration at the end of the first week! The Bootcamp ends with a Quantum Well Friday (pun intended), a Xanadu tradition where members of both hardware and software teams join for an after-work occasion to chat with colleagues from other teams while having drinks, snacks, and playing table tennis.
So what do the Xanadu Residents work on for 4 months? The projects change every year but the main areas are software, algorithms, quantum machine learning, architecture, and community. You can learn more about previous Residents and what they worked on during 2021, 2022, and 2023 on the Xanadu Blog, or check out the behind-the-scenes with 2023 Xanadu Residents on the PennyLane Blog. This year the Residents will focus on developing new PennyLane features, creating exciting content, building quantum algorithms for killer applications, developing new quantum error correction schemes, and implementing new ways of preparing photonic qubits. This is the dream!
Of course, it’s not only about work. Each year the residents get the chance to participate in a wide range of activities such as visiting popular Toronto tourist attractions, dragon boat racing, trying to beat Juan Miguel at table tennis, and much more!
If you’re dreaming of becoming a Residency-ready quantum researcher, developer, or educator here’s how you can follow along with the 2024 Residents, learn from some of the same materials they’re using, and finish the summer with an awesome project of your own:
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Prepare. Regardless of your area of expertise, you must know your way around quantum computing. Start by learning quantum computing and quantum programming with the PennyLane Codebook. Start with modules I (Introduction to Quantum Computing), learn the theory and solve the codercises, and then move towards more advanced modules to build your skills further. We will be adding many new modules to the PennyLane Codebook in the coming months, including module A (Basic Quantum Algorithms), as well as modules F (Quantum Fourier Transform), P (Quantum Phase Estimation), S (Shor's Algorithm), and G (Grover's Algorithm), which are great if you’re interested in software. If you lean more toward algorithms, you will enjoy module H (Hamiltonian Simulation), and if you're interested in architecture, the module N (Noisy Quantum Theory) will be really valuable. You don’t need to know PennyLane to get into the Residency Program, but it might give you bonus points 😉, so if you’ve earned certificates or badges from completing PennyLane Challenges or participating in events, add a link to your PennyLane Profile to your resume.
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Demonstrate your knowledge and skills. What projects have you done which will catch the attention of potential supervisors? Depending on your area of expertise this might be a coding project (and you can read about the work of one of this year's Residents here), a research project, or a community project. Make sure to review it and polish it, and remember that we’re more interested in quality than quantity. If you’re not sure where to start, you could gear up for the unitaryHACK that starts on May 29th, 2024 — you can show off your skills, contribute to PennyLane, and win bounties all at once!
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Highlight relevant projects and experience. Make sure we notice the project or experience you’re most proud of, and the one that aligns the most with your potential supervisors’ interests. Add this to your resume with a link to GitHub or arXiv where our team can see it. If you need to keep your project private, try to describe it in your resume or statement of interest if possible. If you’re part of a research group, mention this in your resume too. Relevant volunteer projects or open-source contributions to PennyLane and other libraries also count, so make sure to include them!
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Select carefully. Try to aim for one or two potential supervisors or research areas. If you apply saying that you’re happy to work with anyone on any project it becomes harder for us to identify your stronger skills and interests. Do your research and help us identify your stronger skills and your biggest interests. We may suggest another supervisor if we see a good fit, but this will help us look in the right direction for you.
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Don’t be afraid of applying. It’s true that it’s very hard to get into very cool and competitive internship programs like the Xanadu Residency Program, but don’t let this discourage you from applying. Take this opportunity to challenge yourself, improve your skills, and maybe have a chat with some of the supervisors if you get invited to an interview.
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Don’t get discouraged. If you don’t get selected it doesn’t mean you’re not good enough. It’s about your current experience, a good match for planned projects, and the right fit with the team and supervisor. You may be the best expert in the world on quantum finance, but if we’re not working on a quantum finance project at Xanadu or PennyLane, then unfortunately your resume probably won’t look super interesting to our supervisors. We go through several rounds of review per candidate, so if you get rejected before the interview stages it doesn’t mean we didn’t look carefully at your resume, it just means that you’re not the right candidate at this time. You can still apply the following year, and use your projects and learnings to apply to other opportunities in the field. Many Xanadu Residents don’t get selected the first time, but they learn from that experience, improve their skills and complete great projects that really make their applications stand out.
Above all, what we hope to see in a prospective Resident is that you enjoy what you do. At Xanadu, we look for people who love what they do, are committed to excellence, learn every day, and have a high attention to detail. So if this sounds like you, then it’s time to start preparing for the Xanadu Residency Program!
Make sure to subscribe to the monthly Xanadu newsletter to learn about all things Xanadu, and come back in September to learn more about the 2024 Xanadu Residents and their projects. In the meantime take this time to learn, do projects, and join the community on Slack, Discord, and our Discussion Forum.
If you liked this blog post or found it helpful feel free to add a comment or share it with others. We hope to see you in 2025! ♥
About the author
Catalina Albornoz
Building the community around PennyLane