Internships

Summer 2022 Opportunities

The Physics & Informatics (PHI) Lab is eager to welcome our next class of interns. NTT Research was launched in 2019 for the sole purpose of fostering fundamental research. Our internship program allows every participant to actively contribute to that research while learning from leading minds.

Internships typically last for 12 weeks during the summer. Applicants should be physicists, computer scientists, brain scientists and electrical engineers enrolled in PhD programs and have an interest in exploring the interdisciplinary space between quantum information science and neuroscience using optical technologies.

Applications should be submitted by March 10, 2022 to assure full consideration. In addition to financial compensation, summer housing assistance and travel allowances are available to qualified candidates.

Application for PHI Lab Internships

Internship Benefits

One-on-One Mentoring
Optical Laboratory
at NTT OneVision Center
Lectures
on Quantum Information and Neural
Networks
Quantum Researcher Certificate

The NTT Quantum Researcher Certificate

NTT Research offers an opportunity for motivated students from around the globe to explore the quantum world and earn this certification for engaging cutting-edge research in broadly defined quantum physics and information science.

The requirements for this certification are completion of the internship with, and attendance of lectures instructed by, NTT scientists. The internship lecture series consists of eight 90-minute addresses on fundamental principles and state-of-the-art techniques in quantum physics and information science.

2021 Summer Internship Overview

A total of 22 graduate and undergraduate students from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, India, and Japan took part in the PHI Lab internship program. Their project titles included:

Neural Mechanics in Deep Learning Dynamics
Neural Network Pruning Algorithms
Deep Learning with CIM
Quantum Analog Computing for k-SAT Problems
Experimentally Demonstrating a CIM with an Optical Matrix-Vector Multiplier
Griffiths Phase in Residual Neural Networks
Weakly Quantum Physical Neural Networks
Max-Cut Quantum Algorithm Implementation on GPU
Max-Cut Quantum Algorithm Implementation on FPGA
Cyber CIM
Cyber CIM Architecture
Topological Physics in Optical Systems
Enhancement of Polariton-Polariton Interactions Via a Mediating Material
Compressed Sensing Quantum Algorithm on GPU
Analog Feedback CIM experiment
Optical Simulation with NOPOs
Soliton Frequency Comb Experiment
Tensor Product Theory
Quantum and Classical Discrimination

Publications Co-authored by 2021 Intern Students

"Noether’s Learning Dynamics: Role of Symmetry Breaking in Neural Networks"
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2021
https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.02716
Hidenori Tanaka, Daniel Kunin
"Beyond BatchNorm: Towards a Unified Understanding of Normalization in Deep Learning"
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2021
https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper/2021/file/2578eb9cdf020730f77793e8b58e165a-Paper.pdf
Ekdeep Singh Lubana, Robert P. Dick, Hidenori Tanaka
"Coherent Ising Machines with Optical Error Correction Circuits"
Adv. Quantum Technol. 2021, 4, 2100077
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/qute.202100077
Sam Reifenstein, Satoshi Kako, Farad Khoyratee, Timothée Leleu, Yoshihisa Yamamoto
"Quantum advantage for noisy channel discrimination"
Accepted for Physical Review A
https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.08707
Zane M. Rossi, Jeffery Yu, Isaac L. Chuang, Sho Sugiura
"Benchmark Study of Quantum Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization: Unitary versus Dissipative"
arXiv:2105.03528
https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.03528
Krishanu Sankar, Artur Scherer, Satoshi Kako, Sam Reifenstein, Navid Ghadermarzy, Willem B. Krayenhoff, Yoshitaka Inui, Edwin Ng,
Tatsuhiro Onodera, Pooya Ronagh, Yoshihisa Yamamoto

Last Summer’s Lecture Schedule

The 2021 series consisted of eight lectures over eight weeks during July and August and covered multiple subjects pertaining to quantum information and neural networks.

Week 1 Yoshihisa Yamamoto Fundamental Postulates in Quantum Mechanics: Quantization, Projection, and Symmetrization Postulates
Week 2 Edwin Ng Digital Software for Simulating Closed/Open Quantum Systems, QuTiP and Beyond
Week 3 Adil Gangat Tensor Network Theory: How to Efficiently Simulate a Quantum Spin Chain on Digital Platform
Week 4 Jess Riedel Quantum Darwinism: When Classical Reality Surfaces from Quantum Substrate
Week 5 Tatsuhiro Onodera Introduction to Differential Programming
Week 6 Ryan Hamerly Design Principles for Machine Learning Hardware
Week 7 Logan Wright Open Questions and Challenges for the Physics of Intelligence
Week 8 Hidenori Tanaka Physical Principles of Learning Dynamics

Finally, on November 30th there was an Intern Reunion at NTT OneVision Center in Sunnyvale, CA that featured presentations by all the interns and the awarding of the NTT Quantum Researcher Certificates to each.

About PHI Lab

The Physics & Informatics (PHI) Lab uncovers fundamental principles and novel technologies that advance our information processing beyond the state of the art. We explore the interdisciplinary space between quantum information science and neuroscience using optical technologies. We foster an environment for physicists, computer scientists, brain scientists and electrical engineers to work together to build a new era of computation framework.

While we are relatively new to the United States, NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone) has over 70 years of history in Japan supporting basic research and delivering breakthroughs to the real world.