PhD studentship in Real-World Quantum Verification and Benchmarking of Noisy Hardware

A fully funded four-year PhD position is available to work on the project titled “Real-world quantum verification and benchmarking of noisy hardware”. This position is a collaborative studentship between the University of Edinburgh and the National Quantum Computing Centre. The position will be registered and hosted at the University of Edinburgh and will be jointly supervised by:

• Dr Dominik Leichtle, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
• Dr Elham Kashefi, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
• Dr Theodoros Kapourniotis, National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC), Harwell, Oxfordshire

Over the course of the studentship students will be offered a minimum of three months to work at the NQCC to apply their research within the national labs framework.

This position is part of an annual NQCC cohort of 6 collaborative studentships, in which the projects have been co-developed by the NQCC and different academic institutes across the UK. The scheme will include cohort-based training and activities, enabling students to gain wider skills and develop valuable personal and professional networks.

The broader research context of this project addresses the critical need for reliable, scalable, and provable verification and benchmarking schemes in quantum computing. As quantum hardware matures, exemplified by the NQCC testbed and expanding applications like the NQCC SparQ program, a key challenge arises: establishing a robust trust model for quantum technology adoption. Trust is essential to sustaining investment and interest in this fast-evolving field. By developing a secure, verifiable interface platform, this project will help NQCC navigate the quantum trust landscape and establish global standards for evaluating quantum systems.

The project will advance the TRL of existing verification and benchmarking techniques from 1-3 to 3-6, applying them in real-world environments on the NQCC testbed. Additionally, it will explore novel techniques at TRL 0, advancing them to TRLs 1-3, bridging the gap between theory and practical application. The lack of standardized benchmarking methods currently hampers the adoption of quantum technologies. This project fills that gap, enabling consistent, reliable assessments of quantum devices, with significant contributions to UK and global quantum standards.

Collaboration with entities such as UKQuantum, the British Standards Institute, and the National Physical Laboratory highlights the national importance of the project. Additionally, the project interfaces with cryptography, benchmarking, and hardware design, offering valuable insights to both experimental groups and industry partners. This aligns directly with the UK National Quantum Strategy, advancing Missions 1 (validation of quantum advantage) and 2 (interconnecting quantum devices), representing a strategic opportunity to enhance the UK's global position in quantum technology.

The overall aim of the project is to resolve the quantum trust challenge where the inherently quantum nature of these devices, being beyond classical simulation, complicates their straightforward validation. Investigating if and how classical systems can offer trustworthy, scalable, and efficient validation for quantum technologies is the crucial theoretical and practical challenge we aim to address. Our unique approach is a method that is both formally rigorous and practically efficient for the verification/validation of quantum devices.

Objective 1: Enhance Quantum Verification and Benchmarking Techniques: This project focuses on advancing quantum verification and benchmarking to be applicable on real-world hardware. We aim to refine existing techniques and develop novel protocols that function effectively under the realistic noise conditions of scrutinized systems, particularly within the NQCC's testbed. This will establish comprehensive methods to evaluate quantum computing platforms from an end-user perspective, addressing the critical challenge of trust in quantum computations.

Objective 2: Develop and Implement Scalable Verification Protocols: Quantum verification is vital due to the inherently noisy nature of quantum devices. Recent advances have led to scalable and secure methods that minimize overhead and eliminate reliance on trusted preparations or measurements. This project aims to further these methodologies to provide feedback essential for ongoing quantum hardware optimization, intersecting with fields such as cryptography and secure machine learning.

Objective 3: Create Realistic Verification Protocols for Current Technologies: Addressing the practical limitations of previous protocols that assume a noise-free verifier, this project seeks to design and implement new verification and benchmarking protocols suited to the current technological environments. These methods will accommodate realistically noisy verifiers and be tested for efficacy on actual quantum devices within the NQCC's testbed.

Objective 4: Trial and Evaluate New Protocols on NQCC testbed and in-house systems: The newly developed schemes will be rigorously tested on real quantum devices to assess and benchmark their performance. This direct application will help establish and refine industry standards for quantum device evaluation, ensuring these technologies are robust and reliable.

• Knowledge of quantum computing and an understanding of challenges of building large-scale systems.
• Programming skills in Python.
• A good Bachelor’s Hons degree (2.1 or above or international equivalent) and/or Master’s degree in a relevant subject (physics, mathematics, engineering, computer science, or related subject)
• Proficiency in English (both oral and written).
• Knowledge in cryptography is desirable.

The studentship covers:

• Full time PhD tuition fees for a student with a home fee status (£5,006 per annum).
• An enhanced stipend greater than the UKRI rate (£20,780 for 25/26, exact rate TBC)
• A generous support package to fund relevant equipment and travel.

Applicants should apply via the University’s admissions portal (EUCLID) and apply for the following programme with a start date of 01 September 2025:

Informatics: LFCS: Theory and Foundations of Computer Science, Databases, Software and Systems Modelling

Applicants should state “Real-world quantum verification and benchmarking of noisy hardware” and the research supervisor (Dominik Leichtle) in their application and Research Proposal document.

Complete applications submitted by 30 June 2025 will receive full consideration; after that date applications will be considered until the position is filled. The anticipated start date is 01 September 2025 but later start dates can be considered.

Applicants must submit:

• All degree transcripts and certificates (and certified translations if applicable).
• Evidence of English Language capability (where applicable).
• A short research proposal (max 2 pages).
• A full CV and cover letter describing your background, suitability for the PhD, and research interests (max 2 pages).
• Two references (note that it the applicant’s responsibility to ensure reference letters are received before the deadline).

Only complete applications (i.e. those that are not missing the above documentation) will progress forward to Academic Selectors for further consideration.

The School of Informatics is one of the largest in Europe and currently the top Informatics institute in the UK for research power, with 40% of its research outputs considered world-leading (top grade), and almost 50% considered top grade for societal impact. 

The University of Edinburgh is constantly ranked among the world’s top universities and is a highly international environment with several centres of excellence. 

Quantum Software Lab (QSL) is hosted at the School of Informatics with cross college activities. QSL in collaboration with the National Quantum Computing Center identifies, develops and validates real-world quantum use cases, transforming classical bottlenecks into quantum-ready problems benchmarked on quantum hardware.