PhD in Design of Next-Generation Quantum Error Correction Codes and Decoders

Are you fascinated by quantum computers and eager to help make that potential a reality? Do you enjoy research and want to join a world-class European consortium shaping the future of quantum computing? Then join QuBriC, a pan-European doctoral network on quantum error correction, as a PhD candidate at TU/e, designing next-generation codes and decoders for real quantum hardware.

Information
Quantum computers have grown remarkably fast. Qubit counts have risen year after year, driven by advances in fabrication, control electronics and system integration. Quality, however, has not kept pace. Today's qubits remain noisy, short-lived and vulnerable to crosstalk and correlated errors. Quantum error correction (QEC) is what turns this fragile hardware into something useful: it protects quantum information by encoding many noisy physical qubits into fewer, far more reliable logical ones. Without effective QEC, adding qubits does not add computing power, because errors accumulate faster than machines can scale. Despite impressive hardware progress, today's codes and decoders remain far too costly and too slow to make large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computing practical. Closing that gap is one of the defining challenges of the coming decade, and it is exactly where this PhD sits.

At TU/e you will join the Information and Communication Theory Lab, a group with a long track record in classical coding and information theory: designing and analysing error-correcting codes, establishing fundamental performance limits, and building practical decoding algorithms and architectures. Your research will sit at the interface between the classical and quantum worlds. You will design QEC codes suited to realistic hardware, develop the decoding algorithms that make them practical, and map the trade-offs between reliability, qubit overhead and decoding latency. A recurring theme will be how the powerful tools of classical coding theory can be carried over to the quantum setting, and how the constraints of real qubit platforms should shape code and decoder design. Depending on your background and interests, the emphasis can lean more theoretical (bounds, code constructions, information-theoretic analysis) or more algorithmic (decoder design, simulation, performance evaluation).

You will not do this alone. This position is part of QuBriC, the first pan-European doctoral network dedicated entirely to quantum error correction, bringing together 16 academic institutions and 7 industrial partners across 11 countries. You will join a cohort of 15 doctoral candidates based in Europe's leading QEC groups, and you will meet them regularly at network-wide training schools, workshops and conferences. Through secondments you will spend time at partner organisations: at the University of Napoli Federico II, testing ideas on superconducting hardware, and at Riverlane in the UK, one of the companies building real-time decoders for quantum computers. By the end of your PhD you will have more than a thesis. You will have a European network of peers, senior researchers and industry contacts working at the front line of quantum computing, and a cross-disciplinary profile that remains rare and in high demand.

You will be supervised by Dr Gabriele Liga (https://www.tue.nl/en/research/researchers/gabriele-liga) and Dr Yunus Can Gültekin at TU/e.

You will carry out two research secondments: one at the University of Naples Federico II (Italy) and one at Riverlane (UK).

MSCA-DN Eligibility Rules

• The candidate cannot already be in possession of a doctoral degree at the date of recruitment.
• Mobility rule: the candidate must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in the Netherlands for more than 12 months in the 36 months immediately before their recruitment date.