EU MCSA DN – QUESTING

The Designing, Managing and Debugging Quantum Networks (QUESTING) Doctoral Network is a ground-breaking European training initiative which has been supported by the Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. We aim to eliminate the major skills shortage in the area of quantum technology and at the same time, to train the new researchers who will be responsible for building the future of secure and efficient communication networks: the Quantum Internet.

The swift evolution of quantum computing and communication has outstripped the demand for specialized, interdisciplinary training. The QUESTING project is coordinated by the group of the world’s leading academic institutions and industry partners who, by providing a structured, cross-sector, interprofessional environment, will produce 15 Doctoral Candidates who can become the innovators that this area urgently requires.

QUESTING tackles the intricate challenges of quantum network design, management, and operation, with a specific focus on algorithmic aspects. Emphasizing large-scale distributed quantum networks, hybrid classical-quantum communication, and applications beyond computing, the initiative aims to overcome limitations of large quantum processors by networking smaller ones through the Quantum Internet. The project leverages entanglement as a key resource, addressing challenges in topology engineering for optimal network performance. However, entanglement is fragile and poses challenges in terms of network topology engineering, link fidelity, latency, and entanglement rate optimization while considering constraints imposed by decoherence phenomena. The management of such networks requires characterizing different components for performance metrics, fault diagnosis, and localization. QUESTING aims to address the above challenges to maximize e-bit rate and fidelity with minimal quantum operations, while enabling fault detection and adaptive healing. The interdisciplinary, international and intersectoral QUESTING network explores mathematics, physics, computing, cryptography and communications engineering from both the classical and quantum worlds to tackle key challenges in quantum network development.