The tropical city of Natal, a historic gem with over 425 years of heritage and home to some of Brazil’s oldest structures, offers a stunning natural backdrop where the Atlantic Ocean meets the dunes of the Atlantic Forest. It is also home to one of Brazil’s leading physics research institutions, the International Institute of Physics (IIP). Dedicated to advancing physics on a global scale, the IIP serves as a bridge between local researchers and the international scientific community. The synergy between Natal’s unique setting and the IIP’s dynamic academic environment provides an ideal venue for the first Quantum at the Dunes summer school and workshop. This event will bring together experts in quantum computing and quantum information, with a strong focus on practical challenges at the intersection of both fields.

Quantum computing and quantum information have both become recurrent topics in physics, permeating not only many of its subfields but also branches of chemistry, computer science, mathematics, and even biology. On the one hand, quantum information provides us with unique lenses through which classical and quantum information, among other (quantum) resources, can be observed as key elements to decipher the properties and dynamics of systems. On the other hand, quantum computing brings forward the theoretical machinery of quantum information, aiming at constructing quantum-information-processing devices capable of exploiting interference, entanglement, and other quantum resources to enable fast computation, surpassing the capabilities of (classical) supercomputers. In fact, it is believed that certain problems, including the simulation of the dynamics of many-body and quantum-field-theoretic systems, would only be efficiently possible with the aid of scalable quantum information processors. Nonetheless, many challenges remain on both the theoretical and experimental fronts in both fields, and the vastness of the research landscape has led to suboptimal interconnectivity within and between the quantum computing and quantum information communities, creating unnecessary hindrances to their mutual development. As such, the “Quantum at the Dunes” workshop and summer school should focus on recent developments in quantum information processing platforms, quantum communication, quantum protocols, and quantum resources and their applicability to practical problems.