_version_ 1866918491112603648
author Abate, Yohannes
Acosta, Victor
Alabastri, Alessandro
Aydeniz, Mehmet
Babicheva, Viktoriia E.
Carr, Lincoln D.
Chen, I-Tung
Ding, Wandi
Drake, Tara
Fitzpatrick, Mattias
Fu, Kai-Mei C.
Gupta, Jay
Hazzard, Kaden R. A.
Hayes, Sophia E.
Hu, Jin
Hurst, Hilary M.
Ismail-Beigi, Sohrab
Khatami, Ehsan
Kono, Junichiro
Lai, Cheng-Yu
Li, Xiuling
Liu, Yingmei
Mouradian, Sara
Murch, Kater
Peropadre, Borja
Phillips, Zoe
Radu, Daniela R.
Sawhney, Akshay
Saslow, James
Scoville, James
Singh, Meenakshi
Siopsis, George
Weld, David
Wong, Chee Wei
author_facet Abate, Yohannes
Acosta, Victor
Alabastri, Alessandro
Aydeniz, Mehmet
Babicheva, Viktoriia E.
Carr, Lincoln D.
Chen, I-Tung
Ding, Wandi
Drake, Tara
Fitzpatrick, Mattias
Fu, Kai-Mei C.
Gupta, Jay
Hazzard, Kaden R. A.
Hayes, Sophia E.
Hu, Jin
Hurst, Hilary M.
Ismail-Beigi, Sohrab
Khatami, Ehsan
Kono, Junichiro
Lai, Cheng-Yu
Li, Xiuling
Liu, Yingmei
Mouradian, Sara
Murch, Kater
Peropadre, Borja
Phillips, Zoe
Radu, Daniela R.
Sawhney, Akshay
Saslow, James
Scoville, James
Singh, Meenakshi
Siopsis, George
Weld, David
Wong, Chee Wei
contents Since 2019, eighteen NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) awards in quantum information science and engineering (QISE) and adjacent fields have been funded, constituting the largest NSF-coordinated investment in graduate QISE training in the United States. Synthesizing lessons from our programs, we work through the central tensions that every QISE graduate program must negotiate: between depth in a home discipline and breadth across the field, between structured instruction and open-ended experiential and hands-on learning, and between training individual specialists and cultivating teams that collectively cover all areas of QISE. We describe the structural and pedagogical innovations the NRT programs have developed in response, assess what is working and what remains unresolved, and sketch 12 open problems the community will need to address as QISE graduate education scales beyond the well-resourced research universities where it has up till now been mainly concentrated. Eight concrete recommendations follow: (1) adopt the startup model of team-based training as an organizing philosophy; (2) invest immediately in sensing and communication curriculum development; (3) build student agency into program governance, not just activities; (4) establish structural mechanisms for industrial engagement rather than depending on goodwill; (5) design for sustainability from year one; (6) develop graduate-level textbooks spanning all three QISE pillars: computing, sensing, and communications; (7) establish shared outcome assessment instruments across programs; and (8) develop structured mechanisms for faculty professional development in QISE.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_08510
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Graduate Training in Quantum Information Science and Engineering: Lessons, Challenges, and a Roadmap from the NSF Research Traineeship Programs
Abate, Yohannes
Acosta, Victor
Alabastri, Alessandro
Aydeniz, Mehmet
Babicheva, Viktoriia E.
Carr, Lincoln D.
Chen, I-Tung
Ding, Wandi
Drake, Tara
Fitzpatrick, Mattias
Fu, Kai-Mei C.
Gupta, Jay
Hazzard, Kaden R. A.
Hayes, Sophia E.
Hu, Jin
Hurst, Hilary M.
Ismail-Beigi, Sohrab
Khatami, Ehsan
Kono, Junichiro
Lai, Cheng-Yu
Li, Xiuling
Liu, Yingmei
Mouradian, Sara
Murch, Kater
Peropadre, Borja
Phillips, Zoe
Radu, Daniela R.
Sawhney, Akshay
Saslow, James
Scoville, James
Singh, Meenakshi
Siopsis, George
Weld, David
Wong, Chee Wei
Physics Education
Quantum Physics
Since 2019, eighteen NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) awards in quantum information science and engineering (QISE) and adjacent fields have been funded, constituting the largest NSF-coordinated investment in graduate QISE training in the United States. Synthesizing lessons from our programs, we work through the central tensions that every QISE graduate program must negotiate: between depth in a home discipline and breadth across the field, between structured instruction and open-ended experiential and hands-on learning, and between training individual specialists and cultivating teams that collectively cover all areas of QISE. We describe the structural and pedagogical innovations the NRT programs have developed in response, assess what is working and what remains unresolved, and sketch 12 open problems the community will need to address as QISE graduate education scales beyond the well-resourced research universities where it has up till now been mainly concentrated. Eight concrete recommendations follow: (1) adopt the startup model of team-based training as an organizing philosophy; (2) invest immediately in sensing and communication curriculum development; (3) build student agency into program governance, not just activities; (4) establish structural mechanisms for industrial engagement rather than depending on goodwill; (5) design for sustainability from year one; (6) develop graduate-level textbooks spanning all three QISE pillars: computing, sensing, and communications; (7) establish shared outcome assessment instruments across programs; and (8) develop structured mechanisms for faculty professional development in QISE.
title Graduate Training in Quantum Information Science and Engineering: Lessons, Challenges, and a Roadmap from the NSF Research Traineeship Programs
topic Physics Education
Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.08510