Building Knowledge Capacity for Quantum Computing in Engineering Education

Abstract The Quantum industry is currently at an embryonic stage. If it is to grow, it will require new markets, and, a workforce with the requisite skills and knowledge to support it. Anticipating this potential growth, this paper will explore capacity building within engineering education on the subject of Quantum Computing (QC). This work has two aims. On the one hand, it seeks to illustrate the need for developing education on the subject, inferred by trends in open literature. On the other hand, it seeks to suggest a starting point for quantum computing education in higher education. Since 2018, a sharp incline can be observed in the number of publications on topics related to QC. These publications are arising within several fields related to engineering including, but not limited to, material science, chemistry and computer science. In response to this trend, this paper will evaluate several third party educational approaches to teaching emergent technologies with a view to developing a model for teaching QC. Due to a lack of precedent in a wide range of industry applications and the current limitations in the state-of-the-art of this technology, the educational model proposed will be one that exploits imagination, as opposed to knowledge acquisition, in the pursuit of new knowledge building.