Pitt hosted its first quantum summer camp for local high schoolers

Quantum information science and technology is one of the fastest-growing professional fields today, and the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. Yet quantum information science isn’t something many high schools spend time teaching — in their defense, it isn’t even in textbooks yet.

But at Pitt’s first Quantum Information Science Summer Camp, Q-Jam, 12 local high schoolers got a taste of the exciting world of quantum technology, the kind of tech that can tackle problems too complex for even the world’s fastest supercomputers, create communication systems that are impossible to hack and make sensors so powerful they could change how we explore the universe.

With funding support from Pitt’s Institute for Cyber Law, Policy and Security, faculty and undergrads from around the University designed Q-Jam. The collaboration was led by Raquel Coelho, assistant professor in the School of Computing and Information and research scientist in the Learning Research and Development Center; Christian Schunn, professor in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Psychology; and Junyu Liu, assistant professor in the School of Computing and Information.

In August, the students gathered on the Pittsburgh campus to learn through game design experiences — classic board games with a quantum twist. The students also virtually visited Zheshen Zhang’s Quantum Engineering Lab at the University of Michigan, where a research team brought quantum experiment demonstrations to life.

The Q-Jam designers plan to continue meeting with this first cohort to seek their input on future camps, gradually building a strong regional community of young quantum explorers right here in Pittsburgh, home to the Pittsburgh Quantum Institute, where the future of this transformative science is already coming alive.

Photography courtesy of Q-Jam