Current trends anticipate that the demand for a quantum workforce will greatly outweigh the supply in the near term. To fill this gap, talent has to be cultivated from the classical fields of science and engineering. Directly or indirectly, classical computing ideas are applicable in the quantum world, allowing for contributions from scientists and engineers who may not be fully trained in the fine details of quantum mechanics. Computer architects are especially critical to this endeavor as they are adept at bridging the information gap between different layers of the computing stack and are well poised to apply their cross-layer experiences from classical computing to the quantum domain.

While educating classical computing experts and novices in the deeper mathematics and physics of the quantum world is challenging, enabling them to think about quantum from the perspective of classical computing control for quantum computing is more conceivable. In this spirit, the I2Q workshop is focused on recognizing and mentoring innovative PhD students across a broad range of technical research areas, with a goal of contributing towards and furthering quantum research. I2Q enables graduate students with a solid classical foundation, a passion for quantum computing and preliminary ideas in a specific quantum domain to be mentored by quantum experts from academia, industry and national labs and support them in their quest towards achieving their research goals. Afterwards, these classically-trained students will confidently say, “I too can Quantum!”