ACENET has secured four spots for Atlantic Canadian university students in Calcul Québec’s 2026 online summer program in quantum computing, now in its second year.
Open to university students from all fields, the participants have free access to both a supercomputer and Calcul Québec’s MonarQ, a 24-qubit universal superconducting quantum computer. MonarQ was designed in Quebec by Anyon Systems and is available to researchers and innovators across Canada. Through the support of Quandela, a European company specializing in photonic quantum computing, participants also have access to Belenos, a 12-qubit photonic quantum computer, along with Quandela’s software tools for designing, simulating, and experimenting with quantum algorithms.
Along with the compute access, the students receive specialized training and mentorship throughout the summer from Calcul Québec’s quantum team.
The projects accepted into the program could range from a first exploration of quantum computing to more advanced approaches, and fall into one of three categories:
Hybrid quantum algorithms
Simulation of quantum systems on classical computing clusters
Quantum software development tools
Out of 55 applications received, 19 projects from 10 Canadian universities were selected, based on project feasibility and candidate motivation. One application from each Atlantic province was selected. One of ACENET’s training specialists will help guide these projects while benefiting from the Calcul Québec team’s quantum expertise.
Congratulations to our Atlantic Canadian participants:
Chandler Acorn, University of Prince Edward Island Muhammad Umair Akram Butt, University of New Brunswick Tooba Javed, Saint Mary’s University Evan Schaffer, Memorial University
As many of you will already be aware, Compute Canada is ceasing its operational responsibilities for supporting Canada’s national advanced research computing (ARC) platform on March 31, 2022, and will be shutting down entirely as a corporation later this year. With this message, we are confirming that this change is not expected to cause any disruption to your services and that no action from you is required at this time.
While Compute Canada may be disappearing, it has been working hard with its institutional and regional partners, as well as its new partner, the Digital Research Alliance of Canada (the Alliance) to ensure that your services will continue to be delivered by the same talented and supportive team members with whom you already work.
You will continue to access your services in the same way that you always have. To log in to the national host sites, you will continue to use your current user id and password on the Compute Canada Database, access help from the help desk by emailing support@computecanada.ca, and access the Documentation Wiki as you do today, with no changes.
What will be different? When you renewed your account last year, you gave us permission to share your information with the new organization. Starting April 1st, your contact information will be transferred to the Alliance from Compute Canada. This was covered under the consent to disclose personal information form to which you consented and your personal information will be safeguarded.
Compute Canada’s social media accounts will also close. We encourage you to follow the Alliance on LinkedIn and Twitter where they will ensure that you have all the latest news on Canada’s digital research infrastructure (DRI) ecosystem. In addition, the Alliance will send you messages from communications@alliancecan.ca, please take the appropriate measures in your email client to prevent these messages from being rejected from your inbox.
What does this mean for researchers and the DRI ecosystem? The Alliance and our institutional and regional partners will continue their transition work over the coming year, including working through the design and implementation of a new service model that will harmonize the three pillars of DRI (advanced research computing, research data management, and research software). They will also undertake the task of rebranding all Compute Canada branded materials, such as the Documentation Wiki.
As this work progresses, the Alliance and our institutional and regional partners will communicate important details about changes and any action required on your part. In addition to information about services that was previously found on the Compute Canada website, the Alliance website will provide up-to-date information on the ongoing transition activities.
A thank you from the Compute Canada team On behalf of the entire Compute Canada team, I would like to thank you for your support over the last decade. It has been our privilege to serve and work alongside the research community. The passion, commitment, and incredible talent that you bring to your work has motivated us to do better and has gifted us a sense of pride when we have been able to contribute to your success along the way.
While we will miss working with you, the good news is that we are leaving you in very capable hands. The Alliance and our regional and institutional partners have committed to minimizing any disruption of service and we know that they will continue to provide the same high-quality services that you have come to know and expect from us.
Robbin Tourangeau President and CEO Compute Canada
The Compute Canada Federation (CCF) is pleased to be able to provide advanced research computing (ARC) support for COVID-19 focused research.
If your project is related to COVID-19 and you could benefit from compute resources and support, please reach out to us. This support could include:
Providing access to cloud resources, high-performance clusters, storage or boosting your job priority
Consulting in high-performance computing (HPC), data management, data analysis, machine learning, and visualization
Connecting you to Canadian scientists from other research areas and institutions to further collaborations.
The CCF is committed to supporting COVID-19 research. We are here to help.
To access these resources, please email support@computecanada.ca with “COVID-19” in the subject line. Include a brief explanation of the type of support you need and a brief description (2-3 sentences) of how your project relates to COVID-19.
We understand that users with Resource Allocation Competition allocations (current and new ones starting April 1, 2020) may choose to repurpose the allocations for COVID-19 research. We would ask that you reach out, using the email address provided above, and let us know your plans to enable us to most efficiently manage demands on our resources.
Please share this information with your colleagues, especially those who are not current Compute Canada users but could benefit from ARC resources.
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