
< (From Left) M.S candidate Dongwon Lee from School of Electrical Engineering, Ph.D candidate Jaehun Han from Graduate School of Quantum Science and Technology >
"Team Yangja-jorim," consisting of Dongwon Lee, Gyungjun Kim and Jaehun Han , has been honored with the Grand Prize at the '2026 2nd Global Quantum AI Competition.' The event was hosted and organized by NORMA, a specialized quantum computing company.
This global competition was designed to expand hands-on experience with quantum cloud services and to discover next-generation talent in the field of quantum artificial intelligence. The event spanned approximately 70 days, beginning with the preliminary opening ceremony held at Korea University’s Hana Square on December 17 last year. The final winners were announced during an awards ceremony held at NORMA's headquarters on the 27th of last month.
The competition attracted significant interest from quantum technology talent worldwide, including university students, developers, and researchers. A total of 137 teams participated in the preliminaries, with the top 10 teams advancing to the finals—a competitive ratio of approximately 13.7 to 1.

< An acquaintance attended the awards ceremony of the 2nd Global Quantum AI Competition to accept the prize on behalf of the team. >
In the final round, participants were presented with four generative problems utilizing the Quantum Circuit Born Machine (QCBM) model. To overcome the current limitations of quantum machine learning, the contestants were tasked with designing and validating Quantum-Classical Hybrid Generative AI models that integrate classical techniques. Notably, the final problem provided an opportunity to verify the proposed methods using a real Quantum Processing Unit (QPU) from Rigetti Computing, a leading global quantum computing firm.
The judging process employed a double-blind system, where the identities of both evaluators and participants remained undisclosed to ensure maximum fairness and credibility.
"Through this competition, we were able to explore the research potential of the quantum AI field more deeply," said KAIST's Team Yangja-jorim in their acceptance speech. "We hope to continue contributing to the advancement of quantum technology through consistent research and new challenges."
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