Because evolution is unitary.
Unitary Fund is supporting the development of QuTiP, the Quantum Toolbox in Python. Interested students can apply to propose a code project in QuTiP and be mentored by the core developers for a 3-month period, working remotely, similarly to the Google Summer of Code. A list of project ideas is available from the QuTiP wiki. Applications are open all-year-round.
Chris Granade - a UF Advisory Board member and senior developer on Microsoft's open source Quantum Development Kit - has some suggestions:
- Additional Q# simulators (e.g.: open systems or CHP simulators)
- New language interoperability; currently, can call into Q# from Python, C#, F#, VB.NET, or PowerShell
- Visualization and/or debugger tools (e.g.: improving the state visualizer sample)
- New libraries for quantum algorithms (e.g.: we’ve gotten requests for QRAM implementations and a Durr–Hoyer library)
Travis Scholten - an Advisory Board member from IBM Quantum - suggests:
- Some of the larger issues in Qiskit Terra labelled as "short projects."
- Implementing the Solovay-Kitaev algorithm for approximating a given unitary by gates from a finite set, to arbitrary accuracy.
- Writing a simulator for parameterized quantum circuits, leveraging the Qiskit Parameter object.
- Building an encoder and decoder for quantum expander codes. (References here, here, and here.)