Shraddha Aangiras | Founder, Quetzal

Shraddha Aangiras | Founder, Quetzal

Rising 12th grader at RV PU College in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Shraddha Aangiras hasn’t finished high school yet, but she is already helping shape quantum’s future.

As a Qiskit Advocate, Aangiras organized the first IBM-Qiskit Fall Fest to take place at a high school. Two hundred and fifteen of her fellow students at the STEM-focused RV PU College in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India attended to hear her teach the fundamentals of quantum computing.

Aangiras founded Quetzal, a quantum career accelerator program. Quetzal, which will welcome its first cohorts in May 2023, teaches students skills they need to complete IBM’s Qiskit developer certification program. Students will then be selected for internships and work opportunities in the quantum field.

The following interview has been edited and condensed.

IBM Quantum: How did you become interested in quantum computing?

Shraddha Aangiras: I started coding when I was young, like second grade. I started getting interested in quantum when I was in eighth grade. My dad showed me a TEDx video about quantum computing and I was fascinated — it sounded mystical. But I was completely lacking in the math and physics to understand it. How could a bit be 1 and 0 at the same time? How did quantum mechanics work?

What did the learning process look like?

I taught myself undergraduate math using Khan Academy and MIT Open. By the time I was in 9th grade, I had finished multi-variable calculus and linear algebra, and quite a bit of undergraduate physics as well.

When I entered quantum, I realized that much of that math didn’t help me as a beginner in quantum computing. So that became my aim: to make quantum computing education more targeted and accessible to students.

You got 415 high school students to show up to hear you teach about quantum computing for hours. How did you make that happen?

I credit that to my teachers. We are a very STEM-oriented school, and the teachers are very encouraging. They went classroom-to-classroom telling people about Qiskit Fall Fest. And I think people didn’t know that it was me, a junior, who would be teaching. They just saw IBM Qiskit and came.

Quantum computing is very fascinating to a lot of people — even some of the medical-focused students came, which was surprising to see. We had to close sign-ups due to logistical constraints, so close to a hundred additional students emailed us hoping to get a chance to attend. The experience was quite surreal.

I talked to them about the theoretical parts of quantum computing and how gates work, I talked about qubits, and then I showed them how to program in Quantum Composer.

Tell us about Quetzal.

I really wanted to continue doing what I did at my high school, some sort of quantum education. So I teamed up with an organization called 1M1B that mentors students to turn ideas into full projects.

My original idea was just to go to different high schools teaching. But with their support we’ve created a career program, where we will bring our 15-day course across India to 2,000 students. To help promising students accelerate their careers in quantum, we will be providing quantum internships and workplace opportunities to top students. To make these internship opportunities available, we are currently looking for internship partners who are interested in hosting interns from our program.?

What’s next for you?

I really want to pursue quantum computing. I’m applying to international universities, which is a bit unusual at my high school.?

I see myself in quantum ten years from now. What I would do, that is something I’m still uncertain about. But something that involves research, definitely. I also hope to still be running Quetzal at a much broader scale