Monika Das

A bit personal…. 

Hello everyone! My name is Monika Das and I am 27 years old. I was born and grew up in a small city named Rangpur in Bangladesh. I did my bachelor’s in Electrical engineering at the University of Dhaka. Sometime during my bachelor’s, I developed a strong interest in physics, and in 2021, I moved to France to study physics. I am currently doing my master’s in Computational physics at Université Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. I live and study in Besançon, a beautiful city in eastern France. 

To be honest, I am a bit shy person and I love to be as near to nature as possible. But in my spare time, I also enjoy traveling to new places, meeting new people, and exploring different foods and cultures. The fact that I love music and have always had a passion for it is another significant aspect of my personality. I have been learning and practicing traditional music since my childhood. I am also very keen to experiment with new instruments and currently, I am learning to play the piano. 

How I end up with SoHPC 2022…. 

Since I started my master’s in France, I have had the opportunity to explore a diverse range of physics topics. At that time, I was getting to know quantum computing and I felt amazed. I wanted to work on a research project related to it and that opportunity came to me with the offer of SoHPC 2022. 

I started looking for a summer internship right after finishing my first semester so that I could develop some skills during the summer. One day, when I was completing job applications and preparing for interviews, my master’s coordinator sent me an email with the URL for the PRACE summer program. Several projects drew my attention, but the one truly fascinated me was, “Fundamentals of quantum algorithms and their implementation”. I applied for the project since I did not want to lose the chance to pursue my ambition. As it was highly competitive, I was not expecting too much from it. But with utter surprise, I got the selection email. Midway through May, on a beautiful morning, I began my journey with SoHPC. 

Quantum computing and what else? 

I assume you have already guessed that the focus of my project is quantum computing. Quantum computing with its unprecedented features has become a potential field of research nowadays. It has a lot of applications in various branches of engineering and physics. As the name suggests, quantum computing is mainly founded on the principles of quantum mechanics. While classical computers are made of transistors and can only have smallest functional units as 0 or 1, the smallest unit in quantum computers is called a qubit, which unlike bits of classical computers can be in a superposition of 0 or 1. What makes it more interesting is that, the computational power increases exponentially. Therefore, quantum computers can give effective solution to complex research problems and handle millions of data with as small as 10 or 20 qubits. There are other advantages of quantum computation over classical computing, like quantum parallelism, quantum teleportation etc.   

What is planned to achieve with this project is to explore such differences of quantum computation with the classical one. Based on a completely different and new principle of quantum computing, our target is to design the quantum circuits of our own. We also plan to test the circuits by using simulators or real quantum hardware.  

My personal goal with this project is to learn more about quantum computing and related simulation techniques. I hope the skills that I will gain through this training will help me choose a career path in this field. However, the overall impact of SoHPC is far-reaching for me. It not only just aims for developing scientific skills but also trains to build active communication and collaboration among participants. The latter is the key for successful research because it opens the door for sharing creative ideas among young researchers.  

That is all about me and my thoughts about PRACE summer of HPC. Let me know what you think and do not forget to stay tuned so that I can get back to you with interesting updates about my work in upcoming weeks.