Quantum Computing for Natural Sciences (with IBM Quantum)

Course
  • Quantum Computing

Quantum Computing for Natural Sciences (with IBM Quantum)

Quantum computers are particularly powerful for simulating other quantum systems.
This is highly relevant for many problems in the natural sciences such as material and drug design.
As even the largest supercomputers struggle to perform the necessary simulations, quantum computation could revolutionize these industries.

In this course, Max, Julian, Alex, and Laurin show how you can use quantum algorithms to study the properties of molecules. The course is aimed at university-level students or professionals with a technical background. Prior knowledge of quantum computing is helpful but not necessary.

Offered by Max Rossmannek, Julian Schuhmacher, Alexander Miessen, Laurin Fischer | Last updated on Jul 15, 2026 | 1975 enrollments

Enroll now
  • Expert
  • EN
  • Certificate
Course information

Computational chemistry and many-body physics are at the core of some of the hardest challenges in natural science, ranging from material design to finding catalysts and even creating new drugs for medications.
Today, a large amount of the world’s supercomputing power is devoted to computer simulations of the involved chemical processes.
However, these methods are computationally expensive due to the exponential scaling of the underlying quantum problem.

Crucially, simulating such quantum systems is a natural application of the emerging technology of quantum computers.
With their intrinsically quantum mechanical operations, quantum computers offer novel approaches to computing various static and dynamical properties of chemical systems.

This course is aimed at professionals and students that are interested in applying quantum computing to solve problems in the natural sciences.

In this course, you will learn how to use quantum computers to calculate properties of molecules and simulate their dynamics. For example, you will learn about algorithms to compute ground and excited state energies and simulate molecular dynamics.
As an outlook, we also consider the challenges involved with running these algorithms on current quantum computing devices.
After the course, you will be able to understand state-of-the-art research in quantum computing for the natural sciences.

This course consists of short study videos accompanied by test questions and a final exam.
The workload for the course is approximately 3-5 hours per week, depending on prior knowledge.

The prerequisites for the course are basic knowledge of quantum information and quantum computing. Knowledge of quantum chemistry is not required but may help you better appreciate some of the course material.

What you'll learn

  • Mapping the quantum description of molecules to the qubits of a quantum computer
  • Computing ground state and excited state energies of molecules with quantum algorithms
  • Simulating molecular dynamics on quantum computers
  • Challenges and prospects of quantum simulation
  • Common error sources and how to mitigate them

Attention: This course is currently in self-study mode, in which you do not have access to graded assignments/exams. Therefore, we can only issue you a certificate of participation.

Requirements for Proofs of Achievement
  • Confirmation of Participation: You will automatically receive a free Confirmation of Participation once you have completed at least 50% of the content.
  • Certificate: You will receive your official openHPI Certificate by earning at least 50% of the maximum number of points from all graded assignments.

Find out more on our page for Proofs of Achievement and Guidelines.

Our teachers

Max Rossmannek

Max Rossmannek is a Ph.D. candidate working jointly between the Quantum Computational Science group at IBM Quantum, IBM Research - Zurich, and the University of Zurich. His research focuses on the integration of quantum computing algorithms into classical computational quantum chemistry routines. He is also one of the core developers of Qiskit Nature, an open source package for the simulation of natural science problems on quantum computers.

He received a B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree in Computational Science and Engineering from ETH Zurich. During his studies he focused on chemistry applications and later specialized in Quantum Simulation.

Julian Schuhmacher

Julian Schuhmacher is a Ph.D. candidate working jointly between the Quantum Computational Science group at IBM Research Europe - Zurich and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). His research focuses on the development of hybrid quantum-classical algorithms for many-body quantum systems.

He holds a B.Sc in physics from the University of Bern, and an M.Sc in physics from ETH Zurich.

Alexander Miessen

Alexander Miessen is a Ph.D. candidate working jointly between the Quantum Computational Science group at IBM Quantum, IBM Research - Zurich, and the University of Zurich. His research focuses on the study of quantum algorithms for quantum dynamics and their application to time-dependent problems in many-body quantum systems.

He holds a B.Sc. in physics from Humboldt University Berlin and an M.Sc. in physics from ETH Zurich.

Laurin Fischer

Laurin Fischer is a Marie Skłodowska–Curie PhD Fellow of the European Training Network MOQS – Molecular Quantum Simulations working jointly between the Quantum Computational Science group at IBM Research Europe — Zurich and the Theory and Simulation of Materials group at EPFL in Lausanne. His research focuses on bridging the gap towards large-scale chemistry applications on superconducting qubit hardware, both on the algorithmic and on the hardware level.
He holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree in Physics from Karlsruhe Institue of Technology and Heidelberg University, respectively. During his studies, he focused on atomic, molecular and optical physics and their applications to quantum information technologies.