Today’s quantum scientists and developers are constrained by a fundamental limitation: high error rates prevent meaningful quantum programs from running at scale. While we can run small, illustrative algorithms on current devices, their depth and complexity are tightly bounded by noise. Progress toward useful quantum computing will depend not just on hardware improvements, but on how well we can reduce, manage, and mitigate errors in the systems we already have.

In recent years, researchers have responded with a wave of innovations in quantum error mitigation (QEM) — techniques that suppress or reverse the effects of noise without requiring full fault tolerance. At the same time, we’re entering an era where early fault-tolerant quantum computing (eFTQC) is starting to emerge. This moment calls for a serious look at how QEM and quantum error correction (QEC) should be used together, and what the software and infrastructure around them must support.

As developers and researchers ourselves, we want to better understand what to build and research next — and we know others in the community are asking the same. Which QEM techniques are most promising? What tooling is missing? Where are the biggest gaps between research and deployment? And how should the lessons from QEM be integrated into the architectures and compilers that support fault tolerance?

WERQSHOP is an attempt to answer these questions together. It’s a space to share hard-won insights, identify dead ends, highlight open challenges, and align around practical next steps—both for the near-term and for the longer path to scalable, reliable quantum computing.

About the workshop

The Workshop on Error Resilience in Quantum computing (WERQSHOP) will take place July 17–18, 2025 at New York University in New York City.

WERQSHOP will bring together researchers, developers, and practitioners working on all aspects of quantum error mitigation and error-resilient compilation—from sample complexity and theoretical performance bounds to real-world implementations in noisy hardware pipelines.

The goal is to foster collaboration between:

• Software developers building open-source QEM tooling and integrations
• Researchers exploring the feasibility and limitations of QEM techniques
• Practitioners applying QEM to improve near-term hardware outcomes
• Compiler and infrastructure developers enabling seamless QEM support

By bringing these communities together, we aim to surface shared challenges, generate focused research directions, and identify key software infrastructure gaps — especially in the context of early fault-tolerant quantum computing (eFTQC).

Invited Speakers

The workshop will feature a series of invited talks and panel discussions, as well as open sessions for participants to share their own work and ideas. Invited speakers span both industry and academia with background in both QEM and QEC, and will include:

• Zhenyu Cai (Oxford)
• Yongshan Ding (Yale)
• Sam Ferracin (IBM)
• William J. Huggins (Google)
• Jin Ming Koh (Harvard)
• Matea Leahy (Algorithmiq)
• Yihui Quek (MIT)

Important Dates

• 📅 Talk & session proposal deadline: May 15, 2025
• 📝 Deadline to register your interest in attending: May 31, 2025

Want to join us — or propose a talk? Fill out this short form.

About the Organizers

WERQSHOP is organized by the team behind Mitiq and the Unitary Compiler Collection (UCC), an emerging suite of tools for noise-resilient quantum compilation. Both projects are developed and maintained by Unitary Foundation, a nonprofit that supports open-source quantum software and research.

In addition to Unitary Foundation’s core team, the workshop is co-organized by researchers from six universities and companies who are actively working at the intersection of quantum error mitigation, error correction, and software tooling. Find the full list of organizers and confirmed speakers at werq.shop.

To learn more about our past research, community projects, and publications, visit unitary.foundation/research.

Funding & Acknowledgements

WERQSHOP is made possible by support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) through a POSE Phase II grant to grow the open-source ecosystem around Mitiq.

Additional support for Mitiq, QEM research, and related software efforts has come from:

• IBM Research
• The DOE ARQC TEAM program
• The DOE ASCR SMART Stack initiative
• And of course our community of Unitary Foundation Members

Special thanks to the many volunteers and co-organizers helping shape this event. You can find the full list of organizers and confirmed speakers at werq.shop.