Porto has taken the quantum leap and takes first prize

Miguel Ramalho, student of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP) and researcher at LIAAD - INESC Porto LA (Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support) took the IBM Q Teach Me Quantum Challenge and won the fourth IBM Q Award, which offered one first place prize of $7,000, around 6,000 euros.

IBM's initiative is aimed at encouraging more teachers and students to take advantage of the IBM Q Experience and the IBM Qiskit development platform. This enterprise was announced in January 2018.

Participants had a number of challenges to be inspired. Miguel Ramalho took the quantum leap, and one year later, in January 2019, took first prize to Porto for creating the best university-level course materials for a lecture series incorporating the IBM Q Experience and QISKit.

"The panel of judges cited the complete, well-designed and well-structured set of notes, slides and exercises presented in a traditional classroom style as well as the extensive use of Qiskit Aqua in Miguel's coursework as the top reasons his submission was selected for first place", reads the official website.

"Disrupting the state of the art is what defines merit. This is what I see IBM doing with IBM Q and Qiskit. It is also what I aimed for when designing the course", stated Miguel Ramalho.