Dr. Faryad will help you build real quantum ML systems

Dr. Faryad has a great way of explaining quantum concepts. Things that usually feel abstract were presented clearly and built up step by step. I left the lecture with a much better understanding of quantum physics than I came in with. Highly recommended!

The workshop provided a comprehensive overview of the process from addressing a real-world finance problem to executing solutions on quantum hardware. The session commenced with live market data for ten US stocks and framed portfolio selection as a return-versus-risk optimization task. The problem was subsequently formulated as a Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) and Ising Hamiltonian, with the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) developed based on the adiabatic theorem. Participants engaged in execution. QAOA was implemented in Qiskit across five structured checkpoints using the Aer simulator, culminating in a sixth checkpoint that executed an optimized six-stock portfolio on IBM quantum hardware. Attendees were provided with four complete Jupyter notebooks and the full slide deck, offering a comprehensive and reusable resource.

The workshop provided a well-structured end-to-end perspective on QAOA for portfolio optimization, from classical portfolio formulation and QUBO construction to the Ising Hamiltonian, variational circuit, and hardware execution. I particularly appreciated the emphasis on exact classical verification, baseline comparisons, and the practical limitations introduced by noise, connectivity, and sampling on real quantum devices. The hands on notebooks made the transition from mathematical formulation to implementation quite effective. Overall, the workshop offered a technically rigorous and realistic view of the current scope of quantum optimization rather than presenting quantum advantage as an assumption.

I really enjoyed this workshop. The explanations were clear and well-structured, and I especially appreciated how the theoretical concepts were connected to a practical, real-world use case. This made QAOA easier to understand and demonstrated how quantum optimisation can be applied in practice.

Great session