NLP Lab
The Natural Language Processing Lab and Quantum AI Study Group
Quantum AI (QAI)
Created: Damir Cavar, 2023-06-12
Last change: Damir Cavar, 2026-04-19
The Quantum AI Study Group meetings during the Spring semester of 2026 are held in Luddy Hall BLIF 0002 every Thursday from 5:30 to 7:00 PM.
See the public calendar with all the meeting times and details: NLP-Lab and Quantum Study Group Event Calendar.
Schedule
The topics to discuss, papers to read, or presentations to listen to during the Spring of 2026:
| Date | Topic |
|---|---|
| Jan. 2026 | Winter Break |
| 01/14/2026 | Classical and Quantum Embeddings - CBIRD Project - Model Training |
| 01/22/2026 | Classical and Quantum Embeddings - CBIRD Project - Model Training |
| 01/29/2026 | Classical and Quantum Embeddings - CBIRD Project - Model Evaluation |
| 02/05/2026 | Classical and Quantum Embeddings - CBIRD Project - Data preparation and model training |
| 02/12/2026 | Classical and Quantum Embeddings - CBIRD Project - Data preparation and model training |
| 02/19/2026 | Classical and Quantum Embeddings - CBIRD Project - Data preparation and model training; Quantum AI 2026 Conference Preparation |
| 02/26/2026 | Classical and Quantum Embeddings - CBIRD Project - Data preparation and model training |
| 03/05/2026 | Classical and Quantum Embeddings - CBIRD Project - Data preparation and model training |
| 03/12/2026 | Math and C++ code for CBIRD Project |
| 03/14/2026 | Pi-Day and Quantum Day = Lab Party! Cookout meeting and best dish competition! |
| 03/19/2026 | Spring break - no meeting |
| 03/26/2026 | Classical and Quantum Embeddings - CBIRD Project - Data preparation and model training |
| 04/01/2026 | CQT meeting at Notre Dame presenting CBIRD Project - Damir Cavar and Pete Sullivan |
| 04/02/2026 | Running CBIRD training - corpus and data format discussion |
| 04/09/2026 | Running CBIRD training - corpus and data format discussion |
| 04/16/2026 | Running CBIRD training - corpus and data format discussion |
| 04/23/2026 | Running CBIRD training - corpus and data format discussion, Qiskit 2.0 Certificate preparation and presentations |
| … |
Previous Meeting Schedules
Content
- Publications, Talks, and Software generated by this lab
News
- Cavar, D., Peter Sullivan, Shane Sparks, Sam Gray Miller, Ronit Jha, Ayomide Jeje, Yanin Charoenpornsawat (2026) Training Language Models and Embeddings for Hybrid Classical/Quantum Computing. Poster presented at the Midwest Speech and Language Days at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
- Cavar, D., Shane Sparks, Soren DeHaan, Ronit Jha, Ayomide Jeje, Yanin Charoenpomsawat, Sam Gray Miller (2026) Hybrid Classical-Quantum Language and World Models for AI - CBIRD, Poster presentation at the Center for Quantum Technologies (CQT) Meeting 2026 at Notre Dame, 1st of April, 2026.
- Cavar, D. “From Vectors to Qubits: Rethinking AI Models for the Hybrid Classical–Quantum Era,” invited keynote lecture, September 16-18, 2026 at the 37th Central European Conference on Information and Intelligent Systems (CECIIS 2026), Varaždin, Croatia.
- Cavar, D. et al. (2026) Hybrid Classical-Quantum Language and World Models for AI - CBIRD. Poster presentation at the Center for Quantum Technologies (CQT) Meeting 2026 at Notre Dame, 1st of April, 2026.
- Cavar, D. “Hybrid Classical/Quantum Data Structures And Experiments For New AI Architectures,” March 25, 2026, Research Technologies Speaker Series, Cyberinfrastructure Building, Indiana University.
- Quantum AI Conference 2026 (website currently being updated) will be August 14th–16th on the IUI campus in Indianapolis! Stay tuned for updates!
- The Complex Bidirectional Inducer for Representation Dynamics (CBIRD) is a Language Model trained to be a fully hybrid classical/quantum model, which can be used on CPU/GPU and QPU systems without encoding loss. It is usable as a state-of-the-art text diffusion model, a BERT-style bidirectional encoder-only model, and more — code and model coming soon.
- Presentation on “Optimizing Data Structures for Hybrid Classical and Quantum Computing for AI and NLP” (Damir Cavar) and discussion at the iQafé event on December 18th, 2025.
- Quantum Computing for AI and NLP, presentation at the Luddy School for Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington, Undergraduate Research Experiential Learning Fall 2025.
- Cavar, D., James Bryan Graves, Shane A. Sparks and Koushik Reddy Parukola (2025) Hybrid Classical Quantum Embeddings for NLP and AI using Hamiltonians. Short paper and poster presented at the IEEE Quantum Week 2025, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. (poster)
- Cavar, D., Koushik Reddy Parukola, James Bryan Graves, Shane A. Sparks (2025) Old Wine in New Bottles: Using Classical Word Embeddings in Gate-Based Quantum NLP Systems. Paper to be presented at the Quantum AI and NLP Conference 2025, Indiana University, August 2025. In D. Cavar, V. Aggarwal, S. Chen, J. Busemeyer (eds.) Quantum AI and NLP 2025, Springer.
- Quantum Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing Conference 2025 at Indiana University in August 2025.
- QED-C Discussion and Panel on the Future of Quantum and AI (March 12th, 2025) (LinkedIn post) with Cierra Choucair, Alain Chancé, Damir Cavar, Bob Coecke, Taha Selim (the recording is available on the QED-C YouTube channel)
- Damir Cavar, Koushik Reddy Parukola (2025) Word and Text Similarity Using Classical Word Embeddings in Quantum NLP Systems. Satellite Workshop: Quantum Machine Learning in Signal Processing and Artificial Intelligence at the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. Hyderabad, India.
- Quantum Artificial Intelligence & Optimization 2025 workshop at the 17th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART).
- We launched the Natural Language Qu Kit (NLQK), a Quantum NLP (QNLP) library - GitHub repo, PyPi project, website
Events
- There was a news article about the Quantum NLP Study Group
- Quantum Day 2024, April 14th, 2024, 11 AM - 3 PM, Swain West 007
- CQT - Center for Quantum Technologies, NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) Year 2, Phase I, Spring 2024 Industry Advisory Board Meeting, April 3-4, 2024, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN
TOC
- Introduction
- Most Recent
- Literature
- Tools and Technologies
- Tutorials
- Conferences and Events
- Jobs and Internships
Introduction
The Quantum NLP project in the NLP Lab is currently a study group focusing on the most recent papers in Quantum NLP. Our goal is to familiarize participants with the different tools and environments for QNLP and work on interesting questions related to Quantum and language-related computation or cognitive aspects of language processing and quantum models.
The study group meets independently of the NLP Lab weekly meeting at IU-B. If you want to join this meeting, contact Damir Cavar directly.
See also the recent IU News article for further details.
- QSEc - Quantum Science and Engineering Center
- Center for Quantum Technologies (CQT) - Indiana University, Purdue University, University of Notre Dame
- QuTE - Quantum Technologies for Everyone student club at IUB
- Quantum Information Science (QIS)
Most Recent
- Cavar, D., James Bryan Graves, Shane Sparks, Koushik Reddy Parukola (2025) Hybrid Classical Quantum Embeddings for NLP and AI using Hamiltonians. IEEE Quantum Week 2025, September 2025, Albuquerque, New Mexico. (poster)
- Cavar, D., Billy Dickson, James Bryan Graves, Shane A. Sparks, Koushik Reddy Parukola (2025) The Natural Language Qu Kit - NLQK for Quantum NLP and AI. Unpublished. (poster)
- Cavar, D., Koushik Reddy Parukola, James Graves, Shane Sparks (2025) Old Wine in New Bottles: Using Classical Word Embeddings in Gate-Based Quantum NLP Systems. Paper to be presented at the Quantum AI and NLP Conference 2025, Indiana University, August 2025. To appear in proceedings, Fall 2025.
- Cavar, D., Koushik Reddy Parukola, Shane Sparks (2025) Old Wine in New Bottles: Using Classical Word Embeddings in Quantum NLP Systems. Paper to be presented at the Midwest Speech and Language Days 2025, University of Notre Dame, April 2025.
- Chi Zhang, Akriti Kumari, Damir Cavar (2024) Entangled Meanings: Classification and Ambiguity Resolution in Near–Term QNLP. Paper and Poster presented at the IEEE Quantum Week 2024, Montreal, Canada, September 2024. (paper, poster)
- Damir Cavar and Chi Zhang (2024) Semantic Similarities using Classical Embeddings in Quantum NLP. Paper and Poster presented at the IEEE Quantum Week 2024, Montreal, Canada, September 2024. (paper, poster)
- NLP-Lab poster (2024) Quantum Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. Luddy-Crane Summit on March 29, 2024 at Indiana University Bloomington.
Literature
Papers:
Papers we have read include:
- Laakkonen, Konstantinos, and Coecke (2024) Quantum Algorithms for Compositional Text Processing.
- Zhang et al. (2023) Applications of Quantum Embedding in Computer Vision (focus on Quantum Embeddings)
- Schuld et al. (2014) An introduction to quantum machine learning.
- Coecke et al. (2010) Mathematical Foundations for a Compositional Distributional Model of Meaning.
- Coecke (2019) The Mathematics of Text Structure.
- Gogioso (2016) A Corpus-based Toy Model for DisCoCat.
- Bradley et al. (2018) Translating and Evolving: Towards a Model of Language Change in DisCoCat.
- Kartasaklis et al. (2021) lambeq: An Efficient High-Level Python Library for Quantum NLP.
- Widdows et al. (2022) Near-Term Advances in Quantum Natural Language Processing.
- Alexander and Widdows (2023) Quantum Text Encoding for Classification Tasks.
- Lorenz et al. (2021) QNLP in Practice: Running Compositional Models of Meaning on a Quantum Computer.
- Meichanetzidis et al. (2020) Grammar-aware sentence classification on quantum computers.
- Bob Coecke (2023) Our quest for finding the universality of language
- Widdows, Dominic and Stanley Peters (2003) Word Vectors and Quantum Logic Experiments with negation and disjunction.
Books:
- Nielsen, Michael A., and Isaac L. Chuang. Quantum Computation and Quantum Information: 10th Anniversary Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
- Luongo, Alessandro (2023) Quantum algorithms for data analysis.
-
Hughes, Ciaran, et al. (2021) Quantum Computing for the Quantum Curious. Springer. Open Access, free download.
- Bob Coecke and Stefano Gogioso (2023) Quantum in Pictures: A New Way to Understand the Quantum World, Quantinuum.
- Bob Coecke and Aleks Kissinger (2017) Picturing Quantum Processes: A First Course in Quantum Theory and Diagrammatic Reasoning, Cambridge University Press.
Relevant literature from Cognitive Science and Psychology:
- Jerome R. Busemeyer and Peter D. Bruza (2012) Quantum Models of Cognition and Decision. Cambridge University Press. (FYI: the second edition is coming out soon and it has a special chapter on Large Language Models!)
Tools and Technologies
- lambeq, Python library for experimental Quantum Natural Language Processing (QNLP)
- tket, a quantum SDK
- pytket, a quantum computing toolkit and optimizing compiler by Quantinuum
- pytket-extensions, extension modules for pytket
- Qiskit - Open-Source Quantum Development
Tutorials
- From quantum picturalism to quantum NLP and quantum AI with Bob Coecke
- An introduction to Quantum Natural Language Processing, Nov. 2022 by Amin Karamlou, Marcel Pfaffhauser, and James Wootton
- related presentation from the QNLP 2022
- PennyLane a software framework for Q ML - by Xanadu
Conferences and Events
- The Future of Communications in A Quantum Era at the WestGate Academy, Odon, Indiana, 02/04/2025
- Quantum Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing Conference 2025 at Indiana University in August 2025.
- Purdue Quantum AI (PQAI), Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA
- Quantum Artificial Intelligence & Optimization 2025 workshop at the 17th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART).
- Quantum Natural Language Processing (QNLP) 2022, Oxford, UK
- Quantum Natural Language Processing (QNLP) 2023, Gothenburg, Sweden
- Quantum Physics and Logic (QPL) 2022 (proceedings)
- Quantum Physics and Logic (QPL) 2023 (proceedings)
- Quantum Physics and Logic (QPL) 2024
Jobs and Internships
Cloud Services for Quantum Computation
Links
- Center for Quantum Technologies (CQT) - Indiana University, Purdue University, University of Notre Dame
- Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT)
- DARPA Quantum Benchmarking (QB)
- DARPA Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI)
- Illinois Quantum & Microelectronics Park (IQMP)
- MIT News - Quantum computing
- National Quantum Initiative - The National Quantum Coordination Office (NQCO)
- Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C)
- QSEc - Quantum Science and Engineering Center at IU
- Quantum at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Quantum@ORNL)
- Quantum Information Science at IU (QIS)
- QuTE - Quantum Technologies for Everyone student club at IUB