Doctoral Candidate / PhD Student for Ultra-low Latency Decoding of Quantum Codes Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is offering a fully funded PhD/doctoral candidate position in the Communications Engineering Lab within the European doctoral network QuBriC, a pan-European project focused on quantum error correction and scalable fault-tolerant quantum computing.

The project, titled Ultra-low Latency Decoding of Quantum Codes, sits at the interface of classical communications theory and quantum information science. The successful candidate will investigate ultra-low-latency parallelized decoding methods for quantum error correction codes, with the goal of making real-time error correction more practical for future quantum computers. The research agenda may include extending belief propagation and neural decoders to ensemble-decoding frameworks for advanced qLDPC codes, developing new decoding schemes based on mathematical properties of the codes, designing codes that enable low-latency decoders, and benchmarking methods against state-of-the-art approaches such as Relay-BP and single-shot decoding under cat-qubit hardware constraints.

The position is part of QuBriC, which brings together academic and industrial partners across Europe and includes training schools, workshops, conferences, and two secondments. The recruited doctoral candidate will be supervised at KIT by Prof. Dr. Laurent Schmalen and Dr. Hedongliang Liu, and will complete secondments at University College London and Alice&Bob.

The appointment starts on or after 1 February 2027 and lasts 36 months. The post is full-time (40 hours per week). The funding follows Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) doctoral candidate rules, with a gross monthly salary of €3924.86 including the mobility allowance, and a possible family allowance of €407.47 if eligible. In addition to research, fellows participate in transferable-skills training, conferences, outreach, and dissemination activities.

Applicants should hold a master’s degree or equivalent in Electrical Engineering, Physics, Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, or a related field. A strong mathematical background and interest in communications engineering, information theory, or quantum information science are important. Experience with coding theory, decoding algorithms, high-performance computing, or programming in Python, C/C++, MATLAB, or similar is advantageous. Good written and spoken English is required, and the candidate must satisfy MSCA mobility and degree eligibility rules, including not having spent more than 12 months in Germany during the 36 months before recruitment and not already holding a doctoral degree.

Applications must be submitted by email to [email protected]. The application should include a CV with publications and references, a motivation letter, transcripts and degree certificates, scientific writing samples, and a brief MSCA eligibility statement. The deadline is 16 December 2026.