Predicting new links in physical, biological, social, or technological networks has a significant scientific and societal impact. Path-based link prediction methods utilize the explicit counting of even-and odd-length paths between nodes to quantify a score function and infer new or unobserved links. Here, we propose a quantum algorithm for path-based link prediction using a controlled continuous-time quantum walk to encode even and odd path-based prediction scores. Through classical simulations on a few real networks, we confirm that the quantum walk scoring function performs similarly to other path-based link predictors. In a brief complexity analysis we identify the potential of our approach in uncovering a quantum speedup for path-based link prediction.

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