From March 16th to the 20th, our group member Juan Manuel Sánchez Melián attended the 2026 Benasque Spring School on Near-Term Quantum Computing. The event was organized by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, ETZ Zurich, University of Geneve and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, and it served as a perfect opportunity to review and assess the state of the art of quantum computing. The event gathered around 70 participants ranging from late master’s students, PhD students, and Postdocs from Europe.
The agenda of the school was filled with lectures from well-known researchers about various topics, such as Variational Quantum Eigensolvers, Quantum Machine learning, Tensor Networks and Quantum Error Correction, among others. They organizers also ideated a Hackathon that required the participants to use all the knowledge gathered across the different days in order to translate a hiking optimization problem into a QUBO formulation in order to be run in real quantum hardware, as well as a poster session in which the participants could present their most recent results.
It was a privilege to attend sessions led by Berta Casas (Barcelona Supercomputing Center), who provided a deep dive into Variational Quantum Algorithms; Maria Schuld (Formerly Xanadu), who gave an enlightening talk on Quantum Machine Learning; and Mari Carmen Bañuls (Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics), whose expertise in Tensor Networks offered a unique perspective on complex systems.
The school was the perfect setting to review the state of the art and identify key entry points for integrating quantum computing into fusion plasma research. Juan Manuel’s participation in the Benasque Spring School was made possible by the Quantum Spain project.