18 December 2025, Taipei, Taiwan – The Hon Hai Research Institute (HHRI) is pleased to announce the successful completion of Round 1 of the Australian Quantum Software Network (AQSN) Micro & MesoGrant Scheme. In this inaugural round, HHRI, as the key sponsor, awarded more than AUD 150,000 in competitive funding to support early-career and mid-career researchers across Australia in advancing quantum software and algorithmic research.

The AQSN MicroGrant / MesoGrant programs are funding schemes designed to support research in quantum algorithms, quantum software, and quantum theory. AQSN members—including students and researchers—may apply. The MicroGrant is suitable for short-term or early-stage open-source projects, while the MesoGrant supports mid-scale or collaborative research efforts. Funded projects typically run for 6–12 months and require outcomes to be open-sourced and publicly shared, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange within the quantum software community.

AQSN founder and Review Committee member Dr. Simon Devitt stated: ”We sincerely appreciate the support from the Hon Hai Research Institute’s Quantum Computing Research Center and the enthusiastic participation of the Australian quantum research community. Congratulations to all the award recipients. HHRI’s generous sponsorship has enabled AQSN to empower the next generation of quantum pioneers and to build a vital bridge between academic excellence and industrial impact. We are honored to collaborate with HHRI in establishing a strong software foundation for the quantum era.”

Dr. Min-Hsiu Hsieh, Director of HHRI’s Quantum Computing Research Center, said:“Scientific breakthroughs often originate from a small yet bold idea. At the Hon Hai Research Institute, we are committed to becoming a catalyst for innovation. By supporting AQSN’s young scholars, we hope to inject fresh momentum into the field of quantum computing. This collaborative initiative represents HHRI’s commitment to nurturing the next generation of quantum talent, and we look forward to seeing students and researchers become key forces driving global quantum technology development.”

A total of 9 projects were selected, including six MicroGrants and three MesoGrants fully sponsored by HHRI. These projects reflect the depth and creativity of Australia’s quantum research community, ranging from foundational theory to practical algorithmic development. The successful recipients and their project topics are listed below:

MesoGrant Recipients

1.       Clément Canonne (University of Sydney) — Towards Understanding Which Quantum Circuits Can Be Classically Sampled

2.       Harini Hapuarachchi (RMIT University) — Towards a Unified Software Toolkit to Simulate Noise in Diamond-Based Room-Temperature Spin Qubits

3.       Angus Southwell (Monash University) — Quantum Gibbs Sampling via Simplicial Complexes

MicroGrant Recipients

1.       Jonas Freiheit (RMIT University) — Optimising Encoding & Readout for Quantum Reservoir Computing Based on Quantum Ising Models

2.       Elija Perrier (University of Technology Sydney) — Coherent Learning for Quantum Agents

3.       Abhinash Kumar Roy (Macquarie University) — Resource-Efficient Characterisation of Multi-Time Quantum Processes

4.       Varun Srivastava (Macquarie University) — Randomised Benchmarking as a Diagnostic for Non-Markovian Noise and Fault-Tolerance Thresholds

5.       Mingyu Sun (University of Technology Sydney) — Scalable Fidelity Estimation and Learnability from Local Measurements

6.       Tianhui Zhu (UNSW) — Implementing Virtual Distillation with Quantum Algorithms

HHRI extends its gratitude to the AQSN assessment committees and the entire Australian quantum research community for their enthusiastic participation. Congratulations to all awardees.

Hon Hai Research Institute remains committed to supporting quantum research and innovation worldwide, fostering academic collaboration, and accelerating the development of next-generation quantum technologies. We look forward to supporting future rounds of this scheme and the exciting research that will emerge as a result.

About Hon Hai Research Institute

The institute, founded in 2020 and part of Hon Hai Technology Group (Foxconn), has five research centers. Each center has high technology R&D professionals, all of whom are focused on the research and development of new technologies, the strengthening of Foxconn’s technology and product innovation pipeline, efforts to support the Group’s transformation from "brawn" to "brains", and the enhancement of the competitiveness of Foxconn’s "3+3+3" strategy. To learn more, visit https://www.hh-ri.com