Recently, development of quantum computers has seen tremendous advances, and some progress has been made towards systems with multiple qubits. Parallel to such developments is active research in quantum networking (and the quantum Internet, at scale), which enables the inter-linking of multiple quantum computers.
Analogous to classical distributed computing, the ability to harness the qubits on multiple quantum computers for larger scale quantum computing then becomes possible, often called Distributed Quantum Computing (DQC). DQC is nascent, and this research program based at Deakin University investigates algorithms and software (including architecture and systems) for DQC, furthering current work in the area, in cooperation with researchers from Cisco working on the next generation of networking based on quantum engineering.
There could be many applications of DQC including quantum machine learning and optimisation at scale, and quantum protocols. This research program will advance the science and practice of DQC, while at the same time training upcoming researchers in this emerging area.