Virginia Economic Review: Third Quarter 2023

The Big Q

Is

PERSPECTIVES FROM THOUGHT LEADERS: Joseph Broz, IBM | La Vida Cooper, NASA | Sophia Economou, Virginia Tech

Jay Lowell, The Boeing Company | Yaakov Weinstein, The MITRE Corporation

What

Quantum?

Industry Titans Drive Interest in Quantum Computing Possibilities

Quantum computers utilize the unique physical properties of qubits to solve complex problems. Inside the quest for quantum supremacy and the business implications across several industries Energy:

Virginia’s Quantum Phase Transition

Virginia

Defense: From Secrets to Sensors: Quantum’s Defense Potential

Financial Services: Making Big Decisions When Seconds Equal Money

Building Certainty Into Virginia’s Quantum Workforce Pipeline

Virginia educational institutions are working to develop the quantum workforce of the future — and it’s not just physicists

The city of Harrisonburg in the Shenandoah Valley boasts a walkable downtown and is convenient to Shenandoah National Park and George Washington National Forest. The city is home to two universities — James Madison University and Eastern Mennonite University.

The Blue Ridge Tunnel, also known as the Crozet Tunnel, was built in the 19th century to carry trains through the Blue Ridge Mountains. The tunnel was the longest in the United States at the time of its completion and has been refurbished as a linear park.

Virginia’s Potential in the Quantum Revolution

HEARING DESCRIPTIONS of quantum computing can make the industry sound almost theoretical. Like the famous quantum physics thought experiment, Erwin Schrödinger’s proverbial cat, quantum qubits differ from binary bits in that they can exist as a 0, 1, or any value in between. Quantum computers rely on qubits to run and solve multidimensional quantum algorithms, and physicists and engineers believe that the computers will be able to solve problems that are effectively impossible for classical computers. Researchers continue to work toward quantum advantage, the as-yet-unachieved point where a quantum computer surpasses the performance of a conventional computer.

This advance would unlock innovations for companies across a wide swath of industries. This issue of Virginia Economic Review goes in depth on several of those industries — life sciences, energy, transportation and logistics, defense, and financial services. We also detail the innovative quantum research taking place at Virginia universities, and efforts to create a quantum workforce composed of physicists and the other roles necessary to support quantum development. Also inside are discussions with several industry leaders driving quantum technology forward: Joseph Broz of IBM, Yaakov Weinstein of The MITRE Corporation, Jay Lowell of The Boeing Company, La Vida Cooper of NASA, and Sophia Economou of Virginia Tech.

The quantum field is still nascent, with huge amounts of expansion yet to take place. Virginia, and Northern Virginia specifically, is ideally positioned as a potential leader in the quantum computing field. The federal government, with its massive research capabilities, is right next door in Washington, D.C., and key federal agencies that support quantum innovation, notably NASA and the Department of Defense, have a major presence in the Commonwealth. Many of the industry’s major players already operate in Virginia, including Amazon, Amazon Web Services, Boeing, Google, IBM, MITRE, and Northrop Grumman. Beyond that, Virginia is already a leader in many of the industries that will be crucial in building quantum capabilities, including aerospace manufacturing, software, data centers, defense, and more.

We hope you enjoy this look into a field that is poised to disrupt the way the systems that underpin the business world operate. Virginia has both the expertise and the infrastructure to lead the way in the quantum revolution.

Jason El Koubi President and CEO, Virginia Economic Development Partnership

#1

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION OBLIGATIONS FOR SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING R&D National Science Foundation, 2020

#2 DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE OBLIGATIONS FOR SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING R&D National Science Foundation, 2020

#4 TOP STATE FOR DOING BUSINESS — ACCESS TO CAPITAL AND FUNDING

Area Development, 2022

#2 TOP STATE FOR BUSINESS — EDUCATION

CNBC, 2023

#4

MOST INNOVATIVE STATE — HIGHEST SHARE OF STEM PROFESSIONALS

WalletHub, 2023

Selected Virginia Wins

Press Glass, Inc., the largest independent glass fabricator in Europe, will invest $155 million to expand its facility at the Commonwealth Crossing Industrial Park in the town of Ridgeway in Henry County, representing the largest single-company capital investment in county history. The company will construct a 360,000-sq.-ft. addition to its existing facility to expand its U.S. presence manufacturing fabricated windows and doors for the commercial construction industry. The expansion will create 335 new jobs.

Headquartered in Poland, Press Glass was founded in 1991 and has 15 factories across Europe and the United States. The company processes glass for fabricators of windows and doors, facades, and interior glass constructions. The company opened its Henry County facility in 2020 and currently employs more than 300 individuals there.

Funding and services to support Press Glass’s employee training activities will be provided through the Virginia Jobs Investment Program.

MACIEJ MIGALSKI President, Press Glass, Inc.

The expansion of the factory in Ridgeway is a natural step to increase the availability of our offerings and strengthen our position in the American market. After the expansion, the Ridgeway plant will be one of the largest and most automated facilities processing architectural glass in the United States.

Selected Virginia Wins

Central Virginia

Laser Thermal

Jobs: 28 New Jobs

CapEx: $2.9M

Locality: City of Charlottesville

Virginia Diodes, Inc.

Jobs: 24 New Jobs

CapEx: $2.5M

Locality: City of Charlottesville

Greater Richmond

Berkley Insurance Company

Jobs: 72 New Jobs

CapEx: $6.1M

Locality: Henrico County

Hampton Roads

Armed Forces Brewing Company

Jobs: 47 New Jobs

CapEx: $4.9M

Locality: City of Norfolk

Fugro

Jobs: 15 New Jobs

Locality: City of Norfolk

ZIM American Integrated Shipping Services Co., LLC

Jobs: 307 New Jobs

CapEx: $30M

Locality: City of Virginia Beach

New River Valley

Fireworks by Grucci and Pyrotechnique by Grucci

Jobs: 45 New Jobs

CapEx: $5.5M

Locality: Pulaski County

Northern Virginia Fortreum, LLC

Jobs: 53 New Jobs

CapEx: $125K

Locality: Loudoun County

Silver Branch Brewing Company

Jobs: 38 New Jobs

CapEx: $3M

Locality: Fauquier County

Roanoke Region

Wabtec Corporation

Jobs: 38 New Jobs

CapEx: $2.7M

Locality: City of Salem

South

Central Virginia

HEYCO Werk USA Inc.

Jobs: 21 New Jobs

CapEx: $5.4M

Locality: Greensville County

Southern Virginia Press Glass, Inc.

Jobs: 335 New Jobs

CapEx: $155M

Locality: Henry County

Central Virginia Easte

Greater Richmond

Hampton Roads

Virginia’s Gateway Region

Lynchburg Region

Middle Peninsula

Northern Neck

Northern Virginia

Shenandoah Valley

Southern Virginia

South Centr al Virg inia

Northern Shenandoah Valley

Greater Fredericksburg

Washington, D.C.

Quantum Utility THE ERA OF

A Conversation With Joseph Broz

Dr. Joseph S. Broz is vice president for quantum growth and market development at IBM, where he’s responsible for driving commercial quantum applications and business adoption of advanced quantum computing capabilities. Before IBM, he served as executive director of the Quantum Economic Development Consortium and senior quantum advisor to the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. David Ihrie, chief technology officer of the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation, spoke with Broz about IBM’s extensive history and leadership position in the quantum computing field and why recent quantum successes are so important.

David Ihrie: IBM is one of the pioneers of quantum science and technology. Can you highlight some of IBM’s quantum history and your current priorities in the quantum space?

Joseph Broz: For a number of decades, quantum information science has been a theoretical promise, and today we have evidence it’s becoming real. The quantum computing promise is that we’ll be able to solve problems that have been heretofore unsolvable, that quantum computing is not just a faster or better version of the quantum supercomputers or classical systems that we use today, but that it’s an entirely new form of computation. Quantum computing draws from the fundamental laws of quantum physics and carries out calculations using what are known as quantum bits, or qubits.

Qubits can hold simultaneous values at the same moment, whereas a bit can either be just 0 or 1 at any given time. As a result, you have this ability to create a very large computational space, and that gives quantum computers tremendous power to solve extremely complex problems that even the most sophisticated advanced supercomputers are unable to solve today.

So, what does that mean to the everyday user, everyday life, the people on the street? It means better pharmaceuticals, better understanding of fundamental processes of biology, better understanding of fundamental chemistry, new materials, new engineering, better energy storage, more efficient batteries, and more stable financial markets that are optimized using the power of quantum computing to solve outstanding problems today that have heretofore been resistant to solution.

Ihrie: What is the current state of quantum computing technology?

Broz: We have very good and recent evidence that quantum computing today is reaching a point of utility. Quantum computers had always

pointed to tremendous economic potential. Recently at IBM, we started to gain strong evidence that we had crossed a certain threshold, that in fact quantum computing is showing evidence of utility.

What’s changed here is that while quantum computers had tremendous promise and theoretical opportunity was evident, they are inherently noisy. These turn out to be rather delicate quantum states, these simultaneous states of 0 and 1 that give this tremendous computational power. Any kind of noise or interference can create errors that hamper the machine’s performance.

Recently, we’ve been able to quiet the qubits, our hardware has improved, and our ability to mitigate errors in the hardware — those errors that remained — has dramatically improved. We published at IBM, on the cover of Nature, our breakthrough evidence that current quantum computers do show very strong evidence of utility and can actually perform calculations that even a supercomputer cannot perform. That’s an extraordinary moment in quantum computing, where this theoretical promise that’s been out there for decades is finally being evidenced in a real way with something that is very useful.

Ihrie: Is that threshold the point where you can show there’s a computational “advantage” to the quantum computer versus a classical computer?

Broz: We prefer to call it “computational utility” at the moment, but it is a form of advantage. We took one of our systems and performed a calculation on it and compared that to the same calculation being run on a supercomputer by a team of computer scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who simulated the same model we were running on the quantum computer. And as the problem became more and more complex, the quantum computer continued to perform accurately, but the classical supercomputer system eventually faltered.

Ihrie: IBM is clearly a leader in development of qubit structures. There’s a fair amount of discussion about other approaches that are being called quantum computing, which I would classify as at least taking advantage of some of the quantum properties of say, photons, in nonclassical computing architectures. Do you have any insights into that range of developments?

Broz: We have many worthy competitors. Some really good people are in this field, and we have some excellent competition, which in the American way only makes us better. I think we offer unmatched accessibility, reliability, and scalability of our devices, and this is our very significant advantage as a company.

There are other qubit modalities. Other people in the competitive space are using the same type of qubit we are. People are using spin qubits, and there are those looking at photonic devices, and those that use trapped ions. All are a bit different from each other, and all are making progress in their own ways. But IBM is, I think, the indisputable quantum industry leader at this point. We were in the cloud in 2016. We have 25 quantum computing systems in the cloud today. We have over half a million registered users on our system. We run a couple billion circuits a day. Over six million people have been trained on our software globally. IBM Quantum is a success story.

We’ve always approached this as a full-stack solution. We go from the hardware to the software, the middleware, all the way to the application. We make sure we can scale every layer of that stack and make it addressable, accessible, democratized technology for users so that this becomes a technology that can be used by anyone — not just quantum physicists in an esoteric setting.

Ihrie: You mentioned the capability’s cloud hosting. Will this modality be more like the supercomputer centers or cloud-accessible compute capability, as opposed to an enterprise-level or a desktop-level capability?

JOSEPH BROZ

Vice President for Quantum Growth and Market Development, IBM

Broz: I think we’ll see this as quantum data centers — quantum-centric supercomputers. But we are pushing toward our extremely large systems. We’ve announced plans to put in place, within the next decade, a 100,000-qubit machine. That’s a very ambitious goal, but it’s one that we feel very confident in achieving. We think we have the partners and the team that can perform the research and the very hard work needed to get there. As we scale this up, we’re scaling along with it our capabilities, our software, our ability to utilize these machines, and the applications for these machines.

There are challenges we need to overcome. It’s just a lot of hard work and not some mysterious process that needs to be invented. Difficult research is yet to be done, and some leaps to be made, but nothing that would require an absolute miracle we can’t get our arms around.

We’re partnered with the University of Chicago and their laboratories that they run for the Department of Energy. We have great partners with Oak Ridge, Argonne National Laboratory, Fermi Laboratory, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. We’re also partnered with the University of Tokyo and RIKEN in Japan on applications. So, we really are blessed with very, very good partners globally and a great team internally.

Ihrie: We’re trying to position the Commonwealth of Virginia to take advantage of quantum computing. Virginia is a leader in

things like cybersecurity because of the presence of Amazon and a number of others. Logistics is clearly an area of interest. How do we start preparing a workforce of people capable of taking advantage of these capabilities?

Broz: A vibrant ecosystem for quantum really comprises four elements. One of those, as you mentioned, is the workforce. And I know several schools in Virginia are making efforts to add quantum information science into their curriculum. A number of institutions in and around the DMV area are putting quantum information science in, or have had quantum computing in, their curriculum for quite some time.

The second would be the research and academic communities. The third would be industry and making sure that Virginia industries are engaged in quantum, particularly Northern Virginia industries around the defense and aerospace community. The fourth element in the ecosystem would be access to actual quantum computer systems. I’d love to see Virginia follow suit with New York, Ohio, Japan, Quebec, Germany, Spain, and other areas of the world where they’ve taken the step to put a quantum system on premises.

Until that time, we offer a great opportunity for companies, organizations, and universities to access our advanced quantum fleet through the cloud. Through either one of those modalities, I think access is super important.

Developing that workforce, using that access, beginning to explore industry use cases, and then training the workforce around that is all a very important part of a synergistic ecosystem.

Ihrie: In terms of your roadmap, how do you see the future going?

Broz: I think it’s here and now. The writer William Gibson said that the future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed. At IBM, we’ve made it clear that this is the quantum decade. Our mission, our goal, is to bring useful quantum computing to the world. We’ve had a breakthrough in error mitigation research and we really are in an era of quantum utility. Even though quantum systems are noisy, we now have tools in our toolbox that allow it to be applied to a range of important and difficult problems that might even be impossible for classical supercomputers, but are addressable by quantum computers. I think, once realized, quantum-centric supercomputing will open up new, large, powerful computational spaces we can’t even imagine today.

For the full interview, visit www.vedp.org/Podcasts

We are in an era of quantum utility. We now have tools in our toolbox that allow it to be applied to a range of important and difficult problems that might even be impossible for classical supercomputers, but are addressable by quantum computers. Quantum-centric supercomputing will open up new, large, powerful computational spaces we can’t even imagine today.

A NEW WAY TO Universe Model the

A Conversation With Yaakov Weinstein

Dr. Yaakov Weinstein is chief scientist of quantum technologies at The MITRE Corporation, a major research organization that conducts and supports research from government and industry on topics important to national security and stability. David Ihrie, chief technology officer of the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation, spoke with Weinstein about the fundamentals of quantum computing, the history of the field, and potential implications across a disparate group of industries.

David Ihrie: Can you provide a little detail about MITRE’s mission and role, how that works with the U.S. research community, and how that supports research and development in this pretty exciting space?

Yaakov Weinstein: MITRE is a not-for-profit corporation that works mainly and almost exclusively for the federal government. In that role, MITRE runs about six federally funded research and development centers (FFRDC). That’s almost like a little company set up by the government for the government. MITRE runs FFRDCs, for example, for the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and so on. In this way, MITRE can really serve the large breadth of the American federal government and bring academia and industry to bear for our sponsors.

Ihrie: Can you give us a simplified explanation of quantum basics? What are the top two or three things that make quantum physics different from those things Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein taught us?

Weinstein: Perhaps the way to think about it is the way things act when they’re very small, and by things, I mean photons, which are particles of light, or neutrons or electrons. It’s different than the way we see things act in the regular world. If you had an electron, for example, the electron can be in multiple states at the same time. It can be in multiple places at the same time. It’s a little bit hard to wrap your head around. This is what we call quantum superposition — the ability for a quantum system to be in multiple states at the same time.

If you had a quantum coin, that coin would be able to be both heads and tails at the same time. What’s important is to realize that this is not probabilistic — “It might be heads, it might be tails, and we’re not sure.” This quantum coin is actually heads and tails at the same time. If you had multiple quantum coins, they can be in all sorts of different combinations at the same time, in terms of heads and tails. You have inherent in quantum mechanics this massive parallelism that could be helpful, for example, for computation. Quantum superposition is one of the fundamental phenomena of quantum mechanics that is helpful for quantum technologies.

YAAKOV WEINSTEIN Chief Scientist of Quantum Technologies, The MITRE Corporation

The other big one is called entanglement, and that’s the ability for quantum systems to be more correlated, more together, than conventional systems can be. That allows for all sorts of interesting quantum communication techniques and is also important for quantum computation. Those are the phenomena that make quantum technology special. It makes them different than what we expect from conventional, or what we call classical, technologies.

Ihrie: How do you bring some of those phenomena in to start to think about computing a problem of interest?

Weinstein: We, as in humanity, have never been able to harness these phenomena for our use. That’s what we’re trying to do. But assuming we can harness them for the betterment of humanity, we could start talking about these technologies like quantum computing. And if we had a quantum computer, that enables us to exploit that massive parallelism inherent in quantum superposition. Certain problems could be done more efficiently than can be done currently on conventional computers.

The first application of that, which was discovered in 1994 by a mathematician named Peter Shor, was the fact that a quantum computer, if it ever reached sufficient maturity, could break RSA cryptography. That means it could break current encryption codes. In general, you can send your credit card number over the internet without anybody stealing it because you can encrypt that number in a code that can’t be broken easily by conventional computers. But that very encryption protocol you use can be broken efficiently by a quantum computer.

In the final truth, as far as we as humanity know, the real world is actually based on quantum mechanics. Therefore, if we’re trying to design materials or pharmaceuticals, we want to know how they work at their most base level. And the way to do that is to understand quantum mechanics. We might try to simulate these things on our conventional computers, and we’ve done an amazing job doing that. But if we could simulate them on their most

If we’re trying to design materials or pharmaceuticals, we want to know how they work at their most base level. And the way to do that is to understand quantum mechanics. We might try to simulate these things on our conventional computers, but if we could simulate them on their most basic level using a quantum computer, that would revolutionize these areas.

basic level using a quantum computer, that would revolutionize these areas.

There’s a lot of “devil in the details.” But I do want to warn that a quantum computer is not a magical system. It does follow very specific mathematics and physics. While we do know of different swaths of problems that can be tackled more efficiently by a quantum computer than a conventional one, I don’t want people to think this is some sort of magical system that can do whatever you want.

Ihrie: As I’ve spoken to some folks in the field, one of the things they talk about is that it’s likely software applications will be some hybrid combination that runs partially on classical computers, partially on quantum computers, so that in the full system, each could do the things they’re best suited for. Do you agree with that vision?

Weinstein: That’s certainly the path that things are going down to this point. Maybe there is a point in the far distant future where things become more of the quantum computer and we retire the conventional computer, though I’m not sure that will ever happen. I do also want to emphasize the fact that people are inherently quantum because everything is inherently quantum. But we don’t straightforwardly interact with quantum systems. We always need to use something like the laser, or something similar, to actually interact with quantum systems. Those lasers and the like are controlled by conventional computers.

There’s also a question of what’s useful. There’s not been a clear demonstration where a quantum computer can do something practical that is currently impossible for a conventional computer, but it would be a big milestone. To do something that is actually practical and can be helpful for humans.

Ihrie: What do you think are some leading candidates, and what kinds of applications do you think might be first up in that sort of demonstration?

Weinstein: A lot of people have pointed to optimization routines or types of machine learning as a first practical realization — the reason being that for an optimization routine,

you don’t necessarily need the best answer. We’d love to get the best answer, but sometimes it’s more important to get a really good answer in a short time.

I’m honestly not totally convinced that’s the way to go due to the way errors operate. But that is arguable. I like pointing more toward simulations, simulating a material or a pharmaceutical as a nearer-term application of quantum computers. But this is a really, really hard problem.

Ihrie: How do you see these technologies affecting our lives? Is that going to allow Amazon to deliver my packages by drone instead of by truck? What kinds of things do you expect to see?

Weinstein: I’m not sure drone versus truck is necessarily a quantum issue. But for Amazon to be able to optimize the route that drone or truck takes, that’s certainly something you might see a quantum computer being able to do. There are other quantum technologies — for example, quantum sensors. For anyone interested in detecting magnetic fields or electric fields, quantum sensors can do that better than conventional sensors would. But over the next few years, we’ll start seeing some quantum sensors emerge that will either be better performing or have a smaller footprint, allowing you to use that space for something else.

This is a really exciting time. I hope that your readers, even if they may not be physicists or mathematicians, can appreciate the quest that humanity is on, looking at this new area of science, trying to turn that into an engineering discipline, and something that can actually be practical for people.

Ihrie: As we start thinking about how to develop an industry around this, what kinds of things do you think are possible? What can we do to help that industry evolve in Virginia?

Weinstein: MITRE certainly benefits by being in Northern Virginia and in Virginia as a whole. It puts us close to our sponsors. But it’s also a good place to find an educated workforce, which is important and something that certainly MITRE cares about.

Ihrie: What educational pathways do you think are most valuable? Is it software? Is it nuclear physics? Is it materials science? How can people be involved?

Weinstein: When I started my Ph.D. 25 years ago, there was nothing. Quantum was this thing a bunch of weird scientists thought about. And I was one of those weird scientists, so that’s what I thought about. The only way to even approach the problem was, you need to get a Ph.D., you need to research in the area, and that’s how you walk through the door.

Things have changed a lot. Having an advanced degree is still valuable, but more and more, we want to get a multidisciplinary picture from all educational levels. We certainly need physicists. We need mathematicians. We need computer scientists. And they don’t necessarily need a Ph.D. We need people with a bachelor’s, many from engineering. We need people to figure out how to design some of these systems.

Ihrie: How do you see that interplay between the research community, and the great work that goes on there, versus the national security imperatives of the United States and our allies?

Weinstein: At a minimum, we certainly want to be able to work with our close allies on problems like this. Fortunately, the United States is signing memorandums of understanding in quantum with a number of nations. What we’re trying to do in the grand scale is going to affect all of humanity. We hope it will.

Ihrie: Dr. Yaakov Weinstein, it’s been a great pleasure speaking with you — really informative.

Weinstein: Thank you, David. It’s a pleasure. And I hope to see the growth of quantum technologies and the quantum industry in Virginia. For the full interview, visit www.vedp.org/Podcasts

The Big Q

Industry Titans Drive Interest in Quantum Computing possibilities

In 1981, computing giant IBM collaborated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Laboratory for Computer Science for a conference, “The Physics of Computation.” At that event, Nobel laureate Richard Feynman called for the creation of quantum computers to simulate quantum physics, famously saying, “Nature isn’t classical, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, you’d better make it quantum mechanical.”

LAST YEAR, IBM Senior Vice President and Director of Research Dr. Dario Gil said, “The big bang of quantum computing will happen in this decade.”

Researchers in government and industry continue to work toward quantum advantage — an as-yet-unachieved stage where a quantum computer surpasses the performance of a conventional computer to accomplish a practical task. This year, IBM and the University of California, Berkeley proved “quantum utility” — a point at which quantum computers could serve as scientific tools to explore a new scale of problems that classical systems may never be able to solve — when they demonstrated that a quantum system with a 127-qubit processor could turn out accurate simulations of the dynamics of mechanical systems (known as an Ising model). With the help of advanced error mitigation techniques, the quantum computer accurately predicted properties such as a material’s magnetization, even as the classical computing methods eventually faltered on a supercomputer.

In August, technology market analyst firm International Data Corporation (IDC) forecast spending on quantum computing to grow to $7.6 billion by 2027, up from $412 million in 2020. That’s a compound annual growth rate of more than 50% a year from 2021 to 2027.

Heather West, Ph.D., research manager for quantum computing at IDC, noted that quantum computing is expected

to be an industry disruptor that has the potential to lead to a competitive advantage. As a result, companies in all industries are experimenting with quantum technology now to identify use cases and develop quantum algorithms to prepare for quantum advantage. Such companies include the Cleveland Clinic in healthcare, JPMorgan Chase & Co. in finance, Ford Motor Company in the automotive industry, The Boeing Company in aerospace, BASF in chemicals, Merck & Co., Inc., in pharmaceuticals, and The MITRE Corporation supporting national security applications. This activity, in turn, drives even more interest and investment in quantum technology.

“Because quantum computing is a complex technology, which differs significantly from classical compute technology, there is a steep learning curve. Companies interested in staying competitive using quantum should consider experimenting today,” West said.

A SYNTHETIC WINDOW INTO THE NATURAL WORLD

“The list of quantum computing use cases is extensive,” West said. “Using quantum computers, scientists and engineers will have the compute power to simulate natural processes, which could lead to more efficient and eco-friendly batteries, or catalysts to combat climate change.”

“What quantum computers have potential to do is help us better understand nature by accurately modeling natural systems,

and thus the very fundamentals of how the world itself works,” said Youngseok Kim, research staff member at IBM Quantum.

Kim added that quantum technology can enable these advances because it uses superposition, entanglement, and interference, fundamental properties of nature. In traditional computing, the basic unit is the bit, which can be either 0 or 1 but nothing in between. In quantum computing, the basic unit is the quantum bit, or qubit. It can be a 0, 1, or any value in between because quantum systems exist as a combination of superposed states.

At the quantum level, atoms or other particles exist in multiple states and interact through interference. Entanglement, which Albert Einstein referred to as “spooky action at a distance,” makes it possible to transmit quantum information, like the state of a qubit, over great distances.

MOVING BEYOND TRADITIONAL COMPUTING

As quantum hardware improves, it has the potential to solve problems a conventional computer cannot. Encryption, for instance, depends on the fact that multiplying two numbers is easy, but going the other way — factoring a number into two components — is not. This difficulty grows exponentially greater for a traditional computer as the numbers involved grow larger. For a quantum circuit, though, the workload increases linearly. Consequently, while factoring a large number is effectively impossible for a conventional computer, that may not be the case for future quantum technology.

RSA cryptography, one of the oldest and most widespread cryptosystems, could be broken using large-scale quantum computers. So could elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC), an approach often used in digital signatures. Algorithms have been discovered for quantum computers that can, unlike conventional computers, efficiently reverse the mathematical operations at the heart of both systems.

West stressed that quantum computing is still a nascent technology, noting that quantum hardware developers are still challenged in their ability to develop and scale high-quality qubits that can perform calculations and solve complex problems faster, more cost efficiently, and more accurately than a classical computer. Currently, it is unknown if certain quantum modalities will be better suited for certain use cases, when quantum advantage will be achieved, and for what industry.

The number of qubits in today’s devices are small when compared to the gigabits of a conventional computer. IBM’s largest quantum system to date is made up of 433 qubits, while other contenders have systems with even fewer. IBM has plans to scale the number of qubits, first to 1,000 and then perhaps to as many as 100,000 by 2030. Other quantum computing contenders are also promising to build systems with more high-quality qubits that perform at high fidelity.

However, quantum systems are inherently noisy and much more error-prone than conventional circuitry. Barriers shield qubits from stray electromagnetic fields

and sounds because doing so improves performance. Even so, consensus has historically held that a million qubits might be needed to do a useful calculation because some quantum circuitry would be used to check on the work of other parts of the system. While this error-correcting overhead can be quite large, the number needed could be much less than a million.

In May 2023, IBM announced at the launch of its Osprey quantum processor, with 433 qubits, that it was accessible as an “exploratory technical demonstration” through the company’s cloud — a major improvement over the 27 qubits IBM achieved with its Falcon processor in 2019, and more than triple the 127 qubits on the IBM Eagle processor, unveiled in 2021. The company plans to build a quantum processor with more than 4,000 qubits by 2025.

One reason IBM’s 127-qubit Eagle processor achieved the published “utilityscale” results is that the latest version of qubits performs better than previous ones, Kim said. A second reason is that researchers devised a way to overcome the effects of today’s imperfect qubits.

“Error mitigation allows us to apply certain methods to the results we obtain from a ‘noisy’ quantum computer, and thus obtain accurate calculations before our industry reaches a state of full error correction,” Kim explained.

By leveraging the ability to maintain long-range connections within a quantum computer, quantum computing startup

PsiQuantum announced a 700-fold reduction in the computational resource requirements for breaking ECC keys relative to state-of-the-art quantum algorithms.

INNOVATORS TAKE DIVERSE APPROACHES

In working toward a useful quantum computer, companies and researchers are pursuing diverse ways to implement the technology. PsiQuantum, for instance, is building a large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computer using photons. This enables the company to leverage the billions of dollars that have been invested into the mature semiconductor industry and has considerable advantages in scaling up, said Peter Shadbolt, the company’s co-founder and chief scientific officer. IBM and others use superconductors sitting atop a silicon substrate. Firms and researchers are also using trapped ions, investigating the spin of electrons in carbon nanotubes, and researching other particles to serve as the basis for qubits.

Today’s qubit approaches use superconducting materials in either the qubits or the detectors, which can require chilling systems to near absolute zero. However, it might be possible to build non-superconducting qubits that operate at higher temperatures. Photons and trapped ions, for example, might lead to useful room-temperature qubits.

Even under the current circumstances, quantum technology is no longer confined to a lab. IBM collaborates with companies around the world on how to

use quantum computing. PsiQuantum is making devices on thousands of silicon wafers in a Tier 1 high-volume semiconductor fabrication facility as part of its effort to build a quantum computer, Shadbolt said.

A broadly useful quantum computer may still be years off. Quantum computers are likely to be expensive machines with shared time doled out to academic and industrial researchers. Due to the fragile nature of qubits and the need to cool parts of the systems to hundreds of degrees below the freezing point of water, many quantum computers will be housed in large facilities with extensive support staff and equipment, not unlike the large servers used by cloud computing providers.

Finally, although quantum computers are good at solving some problems, they are not the best tool for solving every problem. Optimization, for instance, is an area where conventional computers often produce good enough results through finely tuned algorithms.

Quantum technology will have areas where it shines and other applications where the traditional approach, found in smartphones, tablets, laptops, and supercomputers, will still prevail. Thus, the two technologies will complement each other.

As Kim said, “It’s important to note that quantum computing will not replace classical computing.”

Quantum Effect The

Quantum computing is poised to make an impact on a wide swath of industries, from aiding in decision making to discovering new applications for existing materials and elements to securing sensitive communications. Read on for an in-depth look at five industries ripe for quantum involvement: life sciences, energy, transportation and logistics, defense, and financial services.

A Faster, Safer Way to Develop Drugs

Quantum computers’ computational capabilities could unlock next-generation medicines

Recent moves from computer titans such as Google and IBM and pharmaceutical giants like Roche and Merck & Co., Inc. suggest drug research might prove to be among quantum computing’s first killer apps. The reasons? Time and money.

In general, it takes roughly 10 years and $1 billion to bring a drug to market, says Mark Jackson, Ph.D., senior quantum evangelist at quantum computing hardware and software firm Quantinuum. “Quantum computers could reduce the time it takes for drugs to hit the market and reach patients,” he said.

Imagine designing a drug made up of, say, 50 atoms built using up to 10 different elements. The number of potential combinations that might constitute this molecule amounts to a 1 with 50 zeroes behind it, and if one includes the many ways in which each of these compounds might fold, the possibilities grow more numerous than the atoms in the observable universe. Although this level of complexity is far beyond the capabilities of classical computing, quantum computers may possess a game-changing edge at this task.

Quantum computing depends on the surreal way matter and energy can behave at their most basic levels; specifically, that molecules can essentially exist in two or more places at once. With the aid of components known as qubits that display such exotic effects, quantum computers can explore many different variables at the same time.

When Nobel laureate Richard Feynman first proposed the idea of quantum computers, he envisioned them modeling complex quantum systems such as molecules. Major players in

health care are investigating whether these simulations might yield insights into nextgeneration medicines. For example, in March 2023, IBM revealed it was deploying the first quantum computer in the world solely dedicated to health care research at the Cleveland Clinic, a 20-qubit machine that will help screen and optimize drugs targeted to specific proteins.

Currently, the pharma industry uses supercomputers to model how compounds might interact to discover new drugs. However, given the strangeness of quantum behavior, classical computing finds it extraordinarily difficult to simulate molecules past a certain level of complexity.

“Classical computing can’t model a molecule of caffeine, which has just 24 atoms,” said John Levy, co-founder and CEO of quantum computing startup SEEQC. “Even going much beyond a hydrogen atom is difficult. However, pharma may deal with proteins thousands of atoms large.”

The fact that normal computers “have only vague ideas about how possible drugs may interact with biology means they must synthesize a lot of them and test them on humans, which takes money and is risky for people,” Jackson said. “With quantum computing, there can be less guesswork to quickly focus on more promising drugs.”

Recent initiatives from pharmaceutical leaders into quantum computing include the world’s largest private drug company, Boehringer Ingelheim, which announced in 2021 that it would partner with Google to use quantum computing for molecular dynamics

simulations. That year, Roche also revealed it was collaborating with Cambridge Quantum Computing in England to design quantum algorithms for early-stage drug discovery and development into Alzheimer’s disease. (Cambridge and Honeywell Quantum Solutions merged to form Quantinuum in 2021.)

Quantum computers can figure out which molecules might bind most strongly to their targets, which can lower the dose that patients need and potentially lead to fewer side effects. They can also examine a molecule’s structure, how it might change in different settings and over time, and how the body might break it down.

Quantum computing may also find use in drug production. For instance, SEEQC has partnered with Merck to make their manufacturing processes more energy efficient. For BASF, the largest chemical producer in the world, Levy notes that SEEQC’s research could potentially affect about 15% of its manufacturing volume.

However, today’s quantum computers are noisy intermediate-scale quantum platforms, meaning their qubits are error-prone and number up to 1,000 or so at most. Ideally, for practical applications, future quantum computers will likely need many thousands of qubits to help compensate for any mistakes.

For now, companies aim to overcome these limitations with hybrid approaches that pair quantum and classical computers. For instance, the main algorithm used in quantum chemistry research, known as the variational quantum eigensolver, has classical computers doing much of the work, with quantum processors solving the parts of the problem that would prove difficult for conventional machines. This algorithm is used to find optimal solutions to problems, such as a molecule’s most stable state.

Currently, quantum computers can analyze molecules five to 10 atoms large, but conventional small drug molecules often comprise 30 to 40 atoms. To compensate, researchers use quantum computers to analyze multiple fragments of a small drug molecule and then use classical computers to understand how these fragments behave together as a single compound. Beyond

pharmaceuticals, quantum computing may find use in medical imaging analysis and diagnostics.

Another future application for quantum computing may be bioinformatics, the analysis of the vast amounts of data that modern labs can generate. For example, in 2021, Cambridge Quantum Computing partnered with CrownBio and JSR Life

Science to see how effective different cancer drugs are, depending on a patient’s genes.

“Personally, what I’m most excited about when it comes to quantum computing and biology is how it might find use in personalized medicine — finding out how to help people based on their genetic makeup,” Jackson said. “It could absolutely revolutionize pharma and the health care industry as we know it.”

Grid Optimization and Resource Location

Quantum computing is poised to help integrate and optimize renewable energy sources

As renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind become more popular, they face challenges becoming part of electric grids designed for traditional sources of power. Now researchers suggest another promising technology, quantum computing, may help lead to major advances in generating, storing, and distributing energy, and may also help earth sciences better analyze vital natural resources hidden underground such as water and petrochemicals.

“There are few problems more important to our collective future than better understanding and managing our planet’s natural resources — clean water, for example, is a resource that far too many lack, a lack that too often leads to disputation and even outright conflict,” said Jessie Henderson, a graduate research assistant at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “Hence the excitement for quantum computing — built upon a fundamentally different physics than classical computing, and therefore a fundamentally different mathematics, it can theoretically lead to great leaps in our ability to model our natural world.”

Quantum computers depend on quantum physics, the field of science that explains how particles may spin in two opposite directions or exist in two different places at once. They can help explore many possible answers to a problem simultaneously to find optimal solutions.

For instance, quantum software firm Multiverse Computing has partnered with Spanish energy firm Iberdrola to hunt for the optimal quantity and locations for batteries within electrical networks. These batteries are key to storing energy when the sun and wind are producing it

and releasing it when they are not. “Choosing the best place for these batteries is critical, and a problem that grows very complex for classical computers the more possible locations are involved,” said Esperanza Cuenca, Multiverse’s head of strategy and outreach.

In addition, Multiverse is working with another energy company in Spain on smart grid technology that can help power grids detect and react to local changes in electricity usage.

“If we install solar panels, we can generate energy at our houses and inject it into the grid, but this is not a trivial matter — you can’t just inject anything you want whenever you want,” Cuenca said. “You need to pay attention to the capacity and the safety of the whole grid. This becomes challenging the larger the network grows, and quantum computing may be able to help in optimizing the operation of smart grids to help them scale up.”

Quantum computers may also find use simulating fluid flows using so-called quantum machine learning algorithms — essentially, a quantum version of artificial intelligence software. This in turn suggests they may find use in weather forecasting.

For instance, Multiverse is using quantum computing for weather forecasting for one of the leading renewable energy companies in Spain. “If you use wind, you need to know when it may be windy or not, and if you use solar, you need to know when it may be cloudy or not,” Cuenca said. “You need to know when to inject that energy into the grid.”

Numerous companies are also investigating using quantum computing to improve batteries. Quantum computers are theoretically better

than classical computers at modeling the kinds of chemical reactions on which batteries depend, as both quantum computers and molecules are governed by quantum physics.

For example, Hyundai Motor Company has partnered with quantum computing startup IonQ to see how quantum computers can design advanced batteries to analyze and simulate the structure and energy of lithium compounds for the auto manufacturer’s electric vehicle batteries. Similarly, quantum computing firm Quantinuum teamed up with Ford Motor Company to analyze the chemistry of lithium cobalt oxide, a compound often used in lithium-ion batteries. They found quantum computers may accurately simulate it, suggesting it could help model other molecules that may find use in next-generation batteries.

In addition, Quantinuum has helped BMW simulate electrode reactions in hydrogen fuel cells, with the goal of optimizing efficiency and reliability. Fuel cells convert the chemical energy stored in fuels such as hydrogen into electricity, and fuel cells that run off hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, hold great promise as clean, efficient sources of energy. When hydrogen reacts with oxygen in fuel cells to generate electricity, instead of yielding pollutants as fossil fuels do, the result is simply water.

“Quantum computing may help us develop better catalysts to help in fuel cell reactions and may also help us develop industrial processes to create hydrogen at scale,” Cuenca said.

By simulating fluid flow, quantum computing may also help earth scientists learn more about underground natural resources such as petrochemical reservoirs and groundwater aquifers. These geological formations can prove challenging for regular computers to model, given their extremely complex structures and the similarly complicated interactions between the fluids and solids within them.

“Geoscience poses some of the most difficult problems that must be solved numerically,” said Dr. Muhammad Sahimi, chair of petroleum engineering at the University of Southern California. However, “algorithms that can be

used for solving such problems on a quantum computer have been developed.” For instance, Sahimi is now developing a way to analyze porous rocks on a quantum computer from quantum computing pioneer D-Wave.

Similarly, Henderson and her colleagues developed two quantum algorithms for modeling fluid flow through fractured rock. Although one requires quantum computers that are far less error-prone than current experimental machines, the other may still prove useful given modern quantum computers.

“Not every quandary we’d like to solve will be better with quantum,” Henderson said. Still, “the potential great news is this — quantum computing might render solvable certain problems that classical computing could essentially never solve.”

MUHAMMAD SAHIMI Chair of Petroleum Engineering, University of Southern California

Geoscience poses some of the most difficult problems that must be solved numerically ... Algorithms that can be used for solving such problems on a quantum computer have been developed.

A Major Leap in Optimization

Logistics operators see quantum computing as a way to make small improvements with huge results

The Port of Los Angeles is the largest facility for handling shipborne cargo in the United States. With the help of quantum computing, the port’s secondlargest shipping container terminal, Pier 300, dramatically streamlined its operations, with cranes increasing their number of deliveries by more than 60%, and the trucks arriving there each spending nearly 10 minutes less to receive their payloads. Quantum computer experts suggest the experimental devices may one day lead to many other similarly major advances in transportation.

Whereas regular computers switch transistors either on or off to symbolize data as 1’s and 0’s, quantum computers use components known as quantum bits, or “qubits,” which can exist in a state where they can act as both 1 and 0. This essentially lets each qubit perform multiple calculations at once. The more qubits are linked together, the more calculations they can simultaneously perform. A quantum computer with enough qubits could in theory find solutions to problems no classical computer could ever solve.

A key potential application for quantum computers is finding the best solution from a wide range of possible choices. An infamous example of such an optimization task is near and dear to logistics — the “traveling salesman problem,” in which someone is given a list of cities and must find the shortest possible route from a city that visits every other city exactly once and returns to the starting point.

Solutions to the traveling salesman problem can improve delivery of goods. However, “the number of possible solutions to it grows to a vast degree as the number of cities increases,” said

Mark Jackson, Ph.D., senior quantum evangelist at quantum computing hardware and software firm Quantinuum. “Optimization problems are where quantum computing can really shine. And the logistics field is interested because if you can make a shipping company 10% more efficient, it would be worth a fortune.”

In addition to those financial benefits, this sort of optimization could have environmental benefits as well, helping minimize time spent idling in traffic and reducing fuel consumption and carbon emissions. The technology can also be used to analyze the behavior of molecular systems, allowing for the development of more efficient chemical processes to improve battery performance (see page 26).

The increased computational power of quantum computing has the potential to enable supply chain optimizations that account for the entirety of a given ecosystem. Quantum algorithms could help companies manage limited resources more efficiently and shift direction more quickly in the face of sudden disruptions.

For the Port of Los Angeles, quantum software developer SavantX used quantum computing to optimize spacing and placement of containers in order to better integrate their movements with inbound trucks and freight trains. In partnership with Pier 300’s operator, Fenix Marine Services, SavantX developed an elaborate computer-based simulation that served as a “digital twin” of the terminal, focusing on the cranes that collect and maneuver containers. Using a quantum computer from D-Wave with up to 2,048 qubits, SavantX then explored a strategy that scheduled truck appointments based on

when cranes were able to access their intended containers.

SavantX began its work in 2018 for Pier 300’s new owners, who had acquired the terminal for about $850 million the year before. In 2022, SavantX revealed that after optimization, on average, the cranes at Pier 300 increased their deliveries per day from 60 to 97, and trucks spent 58 minutes waiting for their payloads instead of 66. When Pier 300 went up for sale in 2021, it was purchased for $2.3 billion, a nearly threefold increase over its previous price.

Quantum software firm Multiverse Computing is conducting similar research for a major port in Spain, said Esperanza Cuenca, the

company’s head of strategy and outreach. “We can see significant improvements in operations,” she said. “There is a lot of talk about how quantum computing is still in the future, but quantum computing is already happening now, happening silently.”

She added: “When it comes to quantum computing, I urge everyone willing to craft a strategy and execute it now. We’re seeing with the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution that it happened slowly and silently, but those able to foresee where AI was going are extracting more value now. If you wait with quantum computing, it will be too late.”

ESPERANZA

Head of Strategy and Outreach,

CUENCA

Multiverse Computing

There is a lot of talk about how quantum computing is still in the future, but quantum computing is already happening now, happening silently.

From Secrets to Sensors: Quantum’s Defense Potential

Quantum technology could keep communications confidential and protect military members

Inside the glass-walled headquarters of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington County, some of the nation’s most talented scientists are working fast to usher in the quantum age in service of national defense. In May, the agency held an industry day for its proposed QuANET system, which it hopes will help make the military’s communications networks ultra-secure using state-of-the-art quantum technologies.

But the full scope of quantum applications for national defense is far wider than just communications. Advances could include highly accurate inertial sensing systems that obviate the need for GPS, magnetic sensors that can detect submarines or underwater mines with pinpoint accuracy, or even quantum computers that can crack the encryption that currently ensures the world’s communications remain private.

Though these technologies can be grouped together from their shared reliance on the strange world of quantum mechanics, some sharp dividing lines separate them into four broad categories of sensing, communications, encryption, and computers, said Frank Narducci, a professor of physics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.

The technology with the most near-term promise is quantum sensing. Decades of advances in the fine control of atoms and their wave-like properties have led to quantum accelerometers, which can measure

changes in acceleration (and hence position) with extreme precision. When the GPS system, which bounces radio waves between a network of satellites and a ground receiver to measure location, is unavailable, a GPS-free positioning system would be invaluable.

“When we don’t have GPS, we have to rely on our onboard inertial sensors that measure acceleration, rotation, and time to figure out where we were going, how fast we were going, and how fast we were turning to figure out where we are some time later,” Narducci said.

Though the devices are prohibitively expensive for widespread use in military vehicles, Narducci says they could start appearing on new large warships or submarines in the next several years. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories already has a working quantum inertial sensor that it now needs to miniaturize.

Quantum sensors using similar technology could also detect objects hidden underground, by measuring miniscule changes in gravity from above Earth’s surface. “In Iraq, at some point, we were very concerned about weapons of mass destruction being buried,” Narducci said. “Quantum sensors can help us detect those things.”

The next most likely impact on national defense will be quantum communications. Already, countries are building prototype quantum communications networks impervious to hacking, thanks to a reliance on quantum

properties for encryption, rather than the complex math problems used today.

China is the world leader in this field, having deployed integrated quantum networks and a second generation of quantum satellites. “The rest of the world is just building the first generation. In this sense, we are a little bit behind,” said Michal Krelina at Quantum Phi, a consulting firm focused on quantum applications for national defense.

While quantum technologies offer the promise of secure communication, they also pose the largest threat to cracking our current encryption protocols. Math problems used for encryption may take thousands of years for a classical computer to crack, but a quantum device should, in theory, be able to do it in a matter of days or quicker. Some security researchers have said it is likely the world’s largest intelligence services, including the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, are already collecting reams of encrypted data in the hopes that quantum decryption technologies will one day become capable enough to decrypt it efficiently.

If we can build quantum computers capable of breaking encryption, it’s likely they’ll be useful for a whole host of other applications, too, from creating complex new military chemicals to chaotic battlefield simulations. But a clear-cut use is still uncertain because of the low computational firepower of today’s machines.

The time frame for when a powerful enough quantum computer becomes available is still heavily uncertain, Krelina said, and could take anywhere from a few years to decades, partly due to breakthroughs in classical computing making quantum advantages void, and partly because of the difficulty in correcting errors that are naturally part of quantum computing systems, a task that isn’t straightforward.

“We are still speaking about fundamental research,” Krelina said. “There is still risk, or probability, that there will be some surprise in a positive or negative sense. There could be some bottleneck in scaling up, or someone will come up with a super-effective error correction code that fixes most quantum errors.”

Despite these uncertainties, the world’s militaries recognize the potential scale of change and are pouring funds into quantum technologies. In 2023, the Department of Defense asked Congress for more than $700 million for research and development for work related to quantum information science, according to market intelligence firm GovWin. Comparative figures for China aren’t readily available, but the total government spend on quantum technologies for 2023 is around $15 billion.

Raw spending amounts don’t always tell the full story. Krelina said, “The U.S. has very strong private investments that are

world-leading, which allow companies like IBM to be at the top.” Development programs like DARPA, which direct funding toward narrow and specific goals, can also accelerate technological breakthroughs faster than just throwing money at the problem.

Ultimately, the quantum revolution for national defense applications is unlikely to happen all at once. It will be a steady drumbeat of increasing capability, starting with onboard sensors, followed by large-scale communications networks impervious to hacking, and

culminating in quantum computers that can perform calculations impossible for even the most powerful classical computers.

Making Big Decisions When Seconds Equal Money

Quantum-driven financial models represent potential competitive edge for investors

In the world of financial services, time can represent both money and opportunity lost. The potential time savings from the use of quantum computing can help investors ensure they accrue more money than regret. Financial giants such as JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and HSBC are increasingly investing in quantum computing to stay ahead.

A key potential application for quantum computing in finance involves finding optimal solutions to a wide range of problems, including portfolio management, securities settlement, index tracking, pricing financial instruments, and risk analysis. Many optimization problems involve making numerous choices, such as buying at least a minimum amount of an asset, creating a combinatorial optimization problem.

The number of possible combinations of choices involved “grows exponentially with the number of decisions to be made,” said Stefan Woerner, manager of the quantum computational science group at IBM Research Europe. “This can lead to problems that are difficult to solve with a classical computer.”

A quantum computer taps into quantum mechanical properties of superposition, entanglement, and interference to explore compute space inaccessible to classical computers. As quantum technology improves, this could lead to huge benefits in speed. Where a classical computer might need to examine a set of a million choices sequentially to reach

a solution, a quantum computer could use probability to reduce the number of choices to a few thousand. Faster analysis would make it possible to respond quickly to changes in financial markets and for investors to make rapid decisions.

The speed at which quantum computers may one day theoretically work would also give them time to investigate more potential solutions with greater accuracy. “If financial models on quantum computers are even 0.1% more accurate, it will be like printing money,” said Mark Jackson, Ph.D., senior quantum evangelist at quantum computing hardware and software firm Quantinuum. “A financial model doesn’t have to be 100% correct — it just needs to be more correct than the other guy’s.”

“Most large banks have been investigating quantum computing for a long time, including making significant investments in some of the first startups in the early 2010s,” says Carl Dukatz, global quantum computing lead at consulting firm Accenture. “They see the disruption this technology may potentially cause and [the risk of] not being among the first movers in a field that could put companies out of business overnight.”

IBM, which possesses a fleet of quantum computers accessible via the cloud, has partnered with many large banks. The company teamed up with JPMorgan Chase to use quantum computing to estimate the price of a European call option, which allows the owner to buy an asset at a fixed price at

a specific moment in the future. IBM is also working with Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and HSBC to detect fraud and develop higherearning investment portfolios.

Accenture has similarly worked with BBVA, one of the world’s largest financial institutions, to explore how best to use quantum computing to gain a competitive advantage. In partnership with quantum computing pioneer D-Wave, they constructed quantum algorithms for currency arbitrage, credit scoring, and optimizing trading trajectories. They found quantum computing might show benefits in cases when the number of variables grows to a level that classical computing struggles with — for instance, at least a dozen assets with currency arbitrage.

“We’ve also worked with large insurance companies to minimize reinsurance risk with third parties,” Dukatz said.

Ally Financial has similarly partnered with Spanish quantum software firm Multiverse Computing to optimize investment portfolios automatically with returns that match traditional portfolios using significantly smaller sets of stocks. They employed both quantum and classical computers in a hybrid strategy to construct a Nasdaq 100 fund that was four times smaller than conventional portfolios, and 10 times smaller than the S&P 500 fund.

Multiverse also partnered with BBVA to determine the optimal trading path for an

investment portfolio consisting of 52 assets among a sample of 10,382 candidates, using actual fluctuating daily market price data corresponding to an eight-year time frame. Processing such a large amount of data would have taken a classical computer roughly two days, but they found it took a matter of seconds using quantum algorithms.

“We’ve used quantum computing to develop simulations for the Bank of Canada regarding the adoption of cryptocurrencies as a method of payment by nonfinancial players, and for Credit Agricole regarding the valuation of financial products and the assessment of credit risks,” said Esperanza Cuenca, Multiverse’s head of strategy and outreach.

As powerful as quantum computers may theoretically one day be, they are currently so prone to error and relatively limited in scale that their ultimate utility is often questioned. Still, Woerner noted, IBM recently revealed that its Eagle quantum processor achieved “utility” beyond today’s supercomputers in accurately simulating Ising models, an important research tool that simplifies parts of nature that represent interacting atoms — a promising step that could soon also mean breakthroughs in delivering accurate results on useful problems in other domains.

“Now the challenge is on all applications researchers to find algorithms that can leverage such a tool in applications relevant for finance,” he said.

CARL DUKATZ Global Quantum Computing Lead, Accenture

Most large banks have been investigating quantum computing for a long time ... They see the disruption this technology may potentially cause and [the risk of] not being among the first movers in a field that could put companies out of business overnight.

OF QUANTUM’S POTENTIAL

A Conversation With Jay Lowell

Jay Lowell is a principal senior technical fellow at The Boeing Company, where he helps guide technical strategy and research implementation regarding disruptive emerging technologies. Before joining Boeing, he served as a researcher at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and as a professor in the U.S. Air Force. David Ihrie, chief technology officer of the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation, spoke with Lowell about Boeing’s quantum priorities and how the company fits quantum technology into its existing mission.

David Ihrie: Can you give us a high-level overview of Boeing’s work in the quantum space?

Jay Lowell: I work in a small organization within Boeing called Disruptive Computing Networks and Sensors. We have a charter to essentially be a little innovation hub within the company in a couple of disruptive areas. One of those is quantum technology. The other is what we call high-fidelity digital twins, which is about making digital representations of the nonmechanical aspects of our products so that we can better understand their function, advance our understanding of how they’ll behave, and test those things that make the systems work.

What we really have done is take a broad view of quantum technology development and try to make sure we understand how

that aligns with our company’s business and product interests. We look at the general types of quantum technology development — quantum sensing, quantum computing, and quantum networking. We’ve established a series of projects in each of those thrusts. We have a number of quantum sensing projects, including ones to develop better optical clocks and figure out how to use them to drive some of our products to work better and provide better value to our customers.

We have a quantum computing applications team that focuses on understanding algorithms that can run on quantum computers supporting business objectives and how we might incorporate those within the business. And, every bit as importantly, when is it time to start thinking about incorporating those into the business? When do we switch from researching how a quantum computer will

help us to using it in design engineering and manufacturing?

We try to take a long view. Boeing doesn’t make everything we use in our products, nor should we. In doing that, we looked at it strategically and said, “The thing that we need to be better at than anybody else is understanding how to apply these capabilities to the parts of the business that are important to us.”

To me, that’s the way a company the size of Boeing can do things differently than a smaller company. We not only have the resources to take that longer view, but we have a company culture of working on products that take a long, long time to come to market. Airplane development programs are 15-, 20-, 30-year projects from start to finish. That comes with a discipline and understanding of what it takes to look at the big picture and really take the time to understand the value of a particular technology.

Ihrie: Can you provide any specific use cases that you’re looking at as you incorporate those kinds of capabilities? What timelines do you see?

Lowell: The main things we’ve been looking at right now are in materials development. The process of developing a new material system and qualifying it for use in an aviation environment or an aviation application can be a 20-year process. We see opportunities to use computation and simulation to speed that process along and shorten the time we spend searching for a material, or understanding how that material might interact with other materials by doing higher-fidelity, deeper simulations using quantum computers.

Another one we’ve been looking at is optimization of composite systems. That turns out to be a very difficult combinatorial optimization problem. While quantum computers now are not big enough to outperform our high-performance computing systems and methods, we’ve been studying how these problems scale on a quantum computer differently than they scale using our current methods. Based on that, we see a point where the quantum computers will become

The regional ecosystem in Northern Virginia is ideally suited to support these kinds of activities. There is a large population of people with advanced degrees and a large concentration of government research and development organizations.

JAY LOWELL Principal Senior Technical Fellow, The Boeing Company

more capable, so we’re trying to predict where that timeline might be and prepare for that crossover and transition in the future.

Ihrie: It sounds like you’re talking about very broad-based functional teams — not just aerospace engineers, but a range of specialties. Any thoughts around how the ecosystem or how Virginia can support your evolving workforce needs going forward?

Lowell: We looked at this much as we look at developing an airplane. It’s clear that everybody who works on an airplane isn’t an aeronautical engineer, and everybody who’s going to work on some sort of quantum project doesn’t need to be a quantum physicist.

Almost every project team I have is multidisciplinary. I have no team that is entirely physicists. Maybe this is self-serving or a little biased, but my view is that our teams are better for it. We have people who are able to ask questions differently than a quantum physicist might ask and find things. Professional diversity really helps us do a better job developing products and not missing stuff because of biases that having all the same type of people working on a project brings to the solution. Having large interdisciplinary product teams is really how we drive our products to fruition.

We recently announced that we’re moving our headquarters to Virginia. But more important than that announcement was that we’re establishing a research and technology hub in the area. One of its focus areas will be quantum sciences, along with cybersecurity, autonomous operations, and software and systems engineering. The regional ecosystem in Northern Virginia is ideally suited to support these kinds of activities. There is a large population of people with advanced degrees and a large concentration of government research and development organizations. We’re confident the Virginia region has the talent we need to make that hub a success.

Ihrie: How do you see Boeing contributing to the larger ecosystem? What might be Boeing’s role in helping to grow and make that a positive feedback ecosystem?

Lowell: We do a number of different things. We serve on the Quantum Economic Development Consortium, which is helping build the national ecosystem of companies that work in this quantum space. We are working very heavily with the Potomac Quantum Innovation Center. It’s a collaboration of businesses, industry, and government in the Washington area trying to drive and guide development of quantum capabilities in the region.

We invest in regional university development. We see universities as key elements in developing people and talent, and also as places to incubate ideas.

We have a long history of working with small businesses and manufacturers to refine the products and services they provide to meet our specific requirements. We will continue that in the quantum technology space and be development partners with smaller companies, providing resources to specialize what they do to meet our requirements for devices or products where they’re different from what they produce ready-made for customers.

Ihrie: Are there any other ideas or topics you’d like to touch on?

Lowell: Something you had asked earlier was: How might quantum impact the average citizen’s everyday life? The place where I think more people will be impacted in a tangible way is in development of advanced medical sensors using quantum sensor technology. This is an area with substantial market need for advancements. It’s a product that the general public will see because we’re each medical patients at some point in our lives and likely to need those kinds of sensors.

An MRI is an early example of a quantum sensor. Advanced versions of MRIs, for instance, enable people to do functional brain scans without sitting in an MRI with a huge magnet around them. These sensors have an opportunity to profoundly impact people around the world by changing the cost of providing that kind of specialized sensing, as well as the quality of the data produced and the eventual medical outcome.

The other space I’m betting on is navigation. I think this is where quantum sensing provides very clear advantages and allows systems to be built that are both more accurate and more reliable over time. We as a company are very, very focused on this. In fact, we’re doing a flight test to demonstrate quantum navigation systems later this year.

Ihrie: How do you think about the interaction between artificial intelligence and quantum technologies, whether it’s autonomy or quantum computing or something else?

Lowell: Machine learning in the end is about building a model able to take some collection of data and predict how a new piece of data that comes in fits with the original set. You do that one of two ways. You either train a system — provide it lots and lots and lots of images of cats and humans and it finds the edge between those two categories by figuring out where the examples are and then draws the best line that demarcates cat from human — or you use other kinds of machine learning models that are called generative models. These models don’t tell the machine what the answer is. You have it look at the data and ask, “What can you learn about this? What conclusions can you derive from the data as it’s presented?” They seem to function a little bit more like a human brain.

To what extent can the introduction of quantum behaviors improve these generative models’ ability to discern categorization without it being presented to them? Early research indicates that quantum-like behavior seems to improve models’ ability to understand or to develop a categorization that makes sense without being told what the category is.

Ihrie: It’s going to be a fascinating few years, maybe decades, watching these technologies evolve. Thank you very much. I really appreciate your time and your insights.

Lowell: Thank you, David. It’s been a pleasure. For the full interview, visit www.vedp.org/Podcasts

Testing the Potential of Quantum Networking

Virginia Economic Review: Can you give us a high-level overview of DC-QNet’s mission and activities?

La Vida Cooper: DC-QNet is a consortium of six U.S. government research laboratories, departments, and agencies in the Washington, D.C., area. Our founding objective is to create, develop, and demonstrate a regional quantum network testbed that spans the Washington metropolitan area. The testbed is a non-proprietary environment for test and evaluation of concepts, components, network protocols, architectures, and metrology developed both within and eventually beyond the member agencies. We have collectively focused on enabling joint cross-cutting agency synergism in sensor development, secure communications, distributed computing, and yet-to-bediscovered use case applications. It’s a great example of cross-government collaboration to enable, and possibly accelerate, mission implementation.

The consortium is firmly focused on building out a regional quantum network and using it for experimentation, demonstration, tech development, and capability advancement. As capabilities are matured within target performance

A Conversation With La Vida Cooper

La Vida Cooper is the communications and navigation line of business manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the deputy program manager for strategic initiatives within the exploration and space communications projects division at Goddard, and the executive director of the Washington Metropolitan Quantum Network Research Consortium (DC-QNet), a joint initiative among six federal agencies and two affiliates to operate a quantum network testbed.

ranges, then the focus becomes operationalizing those capabilities through integration, both within the DC-QNet testbed and within member department and agency mission-focused initiatives.

One benefit of being in the D.C. region is that we’re close to federal officials and policymakers. We can bring them into our labs for demonstrations, and they can leverage their proximity to the infrastructure to further their understanding of quantum networking and use cases.

VER: How does that regional ecosystem support quantum technology’s development? How has this official partnership been beneficial?

Cooper: Across our members, there is a heterogeneous mix of mission capabilities, and there is a wonderful multidisciplinary group of engineers and scientists. Additionally, we’re able to leverage knowledge and infrastructure across our members, which allows us to be efficient as we pursue our objective.

Also, each of the member organizations have robust interactions spanning academia, the private sector, national labs, and other federal entities. This

Many decades ago, when individuals like Vint Cerf and others pursued networking, it would have been hard for any of them to predict where the world of networking would be in 2023. But there was that glimmer of insight that something significant would result from interconnecting powerful assets. I think the world is potentially at a similar precipice with quantum information science.

LA VIDA COOPER Deputy Program Manager for Strategic Initiatives, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

helps to ensure that the consortium is able to leverage the state of the art in our work, as well as socialize member technology development accomplishments.

One item of note is the helpful role of network organizations in the quantum arena. Within these types of organizations exists a coalition that can include corporate, academic, some federally funded research and development centers, government members, and more working together to achieve regional and national goals around quantum information science.

VER: How does that dovetail with what you’re doing at NASA? What’s NASA’s role in the quantum space?

Cooper: NASA’s vision statement is “Exploring the secrets of the universe for the benefit of all,” and the mission statement is, “NASA explores the unknown in air and space, innovates for the benefit of humanity, and inspires the world through discovery.” Quantum information science can potentially further enable this vision and mission; hence, the agency is engaged in all areas of quantum information science, including quantum computing, quantum networking, and quantum sensing. Quantum is both an emerging and future strategic capability for the agency’s aeronautics, Earth and

space science, and space exploration programs. Potential applications for NASA range from cosmological imaging, mapping planetary bodies and their phenomena, to communications, navigation, and much more.

As for my quantum work at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, I spearhead the center’s quantum networking portfolio, overseeing multiple activities to enable both space-based and terrestrial quantum networking via technology development and strategic initiatives with an eye toward operations. My work with DC-QNet naturally complements the activities that I lead for NASA.

VER: How do you see quantum technology changing businesses and government agencies? What use cases are especially interesting?

Cooper: I’m going to provide an expansive answer. At times, someone will ask, “What’s the advantage of quantum? What will we do in the future that we can’t do now?” I share with businesses and public sector organizations that they should imagine where they want to be in the next 30 years and then work backwards from there. Entities should work with their technologists and user community to see if items within their future vision are really pushing the envelope, divide the supporting

functions and aspects of that vision to identify what’s inherently classical, and then identify what could be enabled by quantum based on what we know now while continuing to track advancements in research.

The world is still working to fully understand the potential and promise of what it means to leverage entanglement as a resource. In the realm of quantum networking, there are clearly some early baseline applications like distributed quantum sensing, distributed quantum computing, security, and others, along with yet-to-be-discovered use case applications. In the DC-QNet consortium, we are working through a lot of the what and how for a range of quantum networking scenarios, along with gap capability identification and maturation to enable implementation and scaling for the future.

Generally, it’s important to remember — whether you’re talking about artificial intelligence, machine learning, quantum information science, or other emerging tech — the key is for stakeholders, boards, founders, investors, and innovators (in the public or private sector) to start with a robust vision about the value they want to bring into the future. Start with that end state in mind, grounded in what makes their value proposition unique. From there, ask subject matter experts,

When I see accelerating factors such as the nearly whole-of-government approach to quantum information science and investments ... I would say we’re at the cusp of an era of accelerated integration for a number of specific quantum application areas.

LA VIDA COOPER

Deputy Program Manager for Strategic Initiatives, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

“Is there anything within this visionary ecosystem that can or should be quantum information science-enabled?” That’s how entities can avoid rabbit holes and reduce the risk of getting out of alignment with their core mission and vision.

Many decades ago, when individuals like Vint Cerf and others pursued networking, it would have been hard for any of them to predict where the world of networking would be in 2023. But there was that glimmer of insight that something significant would result from interconnecting powerful assets. I think the world is potentially at a similar precipice with quantum information science, and quantum networking specifically. It’s all incredibly exciting and why I love the work that I do so much.

VER: You touched on this, but when do you think these technologies are going to be widely adopted?

Cooper: I’ve always been of the mind that every step in the discovery process is needed and useful. Even though a lot of hardware, systems, and testbeds are lab-scale right now, we’re going through

a process of ideation and application seeding that we’ve seen with many other technologies. Where in the past, there may not have been the largest profit margins for a particular capability area or emerging tech, there’s a fair amount of government investment trickling into the economy that provides a means by which commercial and academia, from their lab resource perspective, can start looking at increasingly more applications and figure out how to achieve economies of scale.

I never use numbers to predict when to expect to see certain things in tech, because what I’ve learned over time is the numbers are almost always wrong. But I’ve also learned that the reality of the speed of innovation always beats my predictions. When I see all of these accelerating factors such as the nearly whole-of-government approach to quantum information science and investments, when I look at the incredible momentum of the private sector, the strategic collaborations occurring with international partners, and when I observe the scale of multi-sector coalitions of industry, academia, and the federal entities working together, plus so many different component and/or system

DC-QNET PARTNERS

implementations maturing, I would say we’re at the cusp of an era of accelerated integration for a number of specific quantum application areas in the United States that will benefit the American people.

VER: What are Virginia’s and the Washington area’s strengths in supporting quantum development?

Cooper: In addition to the factors I discussed before, I would add that Virginia has several universities that are engaged in meaningful research and cultivating the next generation of the quantum workforce. Virginia is also home to federal research organizations that have tremendous capabilities, facilities, and research know-how. That’s an augmenting factor for the Virginia innovation ecosystem, especially for quantum. In addition, Virginia has numerous technology companies of varying sizes, and there is a talented workforce supporting all these sectors. With Virginia hosting the 2023 Quantum World Congress, the Commonwealth is poised for even greater things.

OUT-OF-REGION AFFILIATES

Clockwise from top left: National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, U.S. Naval Observatory, National Security Agency/ Central Security Services Directorate of Research, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory

U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (top), U.S. Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific (bottom)

VIRGINIA’S QUANTUM PHASE TRANSITION

Virginia is positioned to be a leader in quantum research and engineering as the industry matures

“There’s no explanation that’s both intuitive and accurate,” said Dr. Sophia Economou, a quantum physicist at Virginia Tech and director of the Virginia Tech Center for Quantum Information Science and Engineering (VTQ). “The rules and the way matter and light behave quantum mechanically are very different than our everyday experience.”

“These quantum properties usually only emerge when dealing with things on the scale of single atoms or extremely cold temperatures — colder than the temperature of space itself in some cases,” said Dr. Patrick Vora, director of the Quantum Science and Engineering Center (QSEC) at George Mason University. “The properties are strange, non-intuitive, and beautiful.”

The quantum frontier is attracting serious investment by private industry and the federal government. In 2018, the National Quantum Initiative authorized $1.2 billion in federal support and has since increased that amount to $3.75 billion, while some states are making large quantum investments of their own.

While Virginia is still ramping up its quantum investment, the Commonwealth is well positioned to be a leader in quantum research and engineering for years to come. The federal government,

which will be a major employer and buyer in quantum technologies, has a large regional presence, existing industry in related fields is poised to support quantum, and Virginia’s universities are conducting forward-looking theoretical and experimental quantum research and anticipating the educational needs of a growing quantum workforce.

The Commonwealth is already a locus of computing, data science, and physics research. For example, in late 2022, the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News was among the institutions jointly awarded a $35 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. The funds will help apply some of the fastest, most advanced classical computers in the world to solve problems in nuclear physics.

In 2022, Connected DMV, an organization that promotes development in Washington, D.C., and the surrounding area, received a $600,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration to establish its Life Sciences and Healthcare Quantum Innovation Hub. One goal is to support the middle ground of technological development between fundamental research and commercial viability, accelerating the growth of quantum technologies.

The Hub is intentionally cross-sector and cross-jurisdictional, and the first year has focused on “working with a group of companies in the life science space to find a framework for what that collaboration would look like,” said Connected DMV Chief Information Officer George Thomas.

Avenues of quantum research can be broadly grouped into four main areas: computing, sensing, materials, and communications. Each of these might have distinct applications in different industries, which makes collaborative, domain-specific hubs appealing.

In the life sciences and health care, for example, quantum computers could help model complex chemical reactions, accelerating pharmaceutical development. Quantum-sensing research could lead to highly sensitive, non-invasive medical imaging techniques. Quantum materials might have some yet-to-bediscovered properties that are useful to medicine. And from a communications standpoint, securely managing health care data will be a quantum problem. Quantum hubs focused on national defense, logistics, finance, or climate science might all have slightly different problems and priorities.

Universities will have a leading role to play in any collaboration. George Mason University and Virginia Tech boast quantum centers that foster collaboration across academic disciplines and quantum outreach to their students.

Once entirely theoretical, the quantum sciences have slowly but surely become applied sciences, opening the door for technologies that take advantage of our improved understanding of physics at the smallest imaginable scales — even if things can be difficult to wrap your head around at first.

There’s no explanation that’s both intuitive and accurate. The rules and the way matter and light behave quantum mechanically are very different than our everyday experience.

SOPHIA ECONOMOU Director, Virginia Tech Center for Quantum Information Science and Engineering

BUILDING A QUANTUM FUTURE AT GEORGE MASON

“Something that gets lost with these new technologies is you’ve got to make them out of something,” Vora said.

Vora’s lab works with many diverse types of materials, with a focus on two-dimensional, layered materials. The use of layered materials provides new pathways to realize devices with on-demand quantum properties. For example, graphene is a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon that holds promising electronic properties but lacks superconductivity. However, if two layers are stacked and misaligned by a “magic angle” at extremely cold temperatures, they become a superconductor. Combining different types of layered materials and mis-orienting them can therefore lead to new quantum behaviors. “It’s allowing us to create new states of matter with potential technological utility,” said Vora.

Researchers at Mason’s QSEC are also working on identifying problems that might be solvable with existing

rudimentary quantum computers and those that are theoretically possible on a dream quantum computer. On the sensing front, George Mason physicist Karen Sauer has produced one of the world’s most sensitive quantum magnetometers. Devices like this can sense the signature magnetic fields of varied materials with potential screening applications in biomedicine, security, and geological surveys, or in navigation as an alternative to GPS.

QSEC is taking a leading role in building the quantum workforce with programs for students and teachers from elementary school to graduate school. A survey of quantum employers found a need not just for doctoral degrees, but a wide range of traditional skills with some quantum awareness and background — the sort of knowledge that might come from a master’s degree, a minor, or in some cases, quantum coursework designed for non-technical, non-scientific workers. They have also surveyed STEM undergraduates to find out what they know about quantum and quantum careers. In response, Mason is

updating curricula, adding a quantum concentration for the master’s degree in physics, and broadening outreach programs.

REAL-WORLD APPLICATIONS FOR QUANTUM INFORMATION SCIENCE AT VIRGINIA TECH

“We have a lot of expertise in quantum computing, which is a broad area in itself,” Economou said.

Quantum computers won’t simply be faster than classical computers, but function in an entirely different way using new operations with an alternative concept of circuitry. Entirely new categories of problems will become solvable, but other aspects of computing will need to be reconsidered to make these machines viable, including the hardware, algorithms, and error correction.

Economou highlights two real-world applications driving the field. Quantum computers are theoretically capable of breaking the sorts of cryptography commonly used today for all sorts of messages and, more critically, for financial transactions. Efforts are already underway

Prof. Sophia Economou and her colleagues at the Virginia Tech Center for Quantum Information Science and Engineering conduct research into fields including quantum communications and networks, which have the potential to form the backbone of the quantum internet.

to safeguard information against the future threat of quantum code breaking. And chemical reaction simulations could change drug development and lead to other novel chemicals, materials, or ways of making them.

Quantum communications and quantum networks make up another area of focus at Virginia Tech. VTQ researchers span this broad subfield, with research ranging from physical platforms to the distribution of entanglement and performance of the network to cryptographic protocols. This research direction is supported by Virginia’s Commonwealth Cyber Initiative, while other university research partners include IBM and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The Office of Research and Innovation at Virginia Tech has named quantum as one of its four key strategic priorities. Recent quantum investments from the university include a dedicated space for VTQ and a new electron-beam lithography machine.

In addition to the important basic quantum research and exploratory work at Virginia Tech, the university is a key technical training ground. The school introduced a minor in quantum information science and engineering in 2022, one of the first in the country. The program was designed to be flexible and interdisciplinary, anticipating that opportunities await graduates across industry, government, and academia. “We tried to design the degree we would have wanted,” said Economou. Virginia Tech also runs a summer camp for high school students, now in its third year.

For the fall 2023 semester, Virginia Tech welcomed five new faculty members across different disciplines, all of whom will work on quantum information science. The center has grown to one of the largest theoretical quantum groups in the country. “As a director, I’m very excited that this is happening,” Economou said. “We’re a very young, interdisciplinary, dynamic center.”

The properties are strange, non-intuitive, and beautiful.

PATRICK VORA Director, George Mason University Quantum Science and Engineering Center

Research at George Mason University’s Quantum Science and Engineering Center includes work with two-dimensional, layered materials at different angles and extreme temperatures, helping to identify new physical characteristics.

Quantum’s Technological and Human Future

A Conversation With Sophia Economou

Dr. Sophia Economou is a professor of physics at Virginia Tech and the director of the university’s Center for Quantum Information Science and Engineering. Her research focuses on theoretical quantum information science, including quantum computing with numerous types of qubits. Before joining the Virginia Tech faculty, she spent several years at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, initially as a postdoctoral fellow and later as a staff researcher.

Virginia Economic Review: Can you give us a high-level overview of what Virginia Tech is focused on in the quantum space? What is your own particular research focus?

Sophia Economou: Our center spans all pillars of quantum information science and technology, which include quantum computing, quantum simulation, quantum communications, and quantum sensing. We have several senior faculty members who have solidified Virginia Tech’s expertise and track record in the field. Our new faculty hires — across campus, we’ve hired seven assistant professors in the last few years — significantly complement and strengthen our expertise in certain aspects of quantum computing, including quantum error correction and quantum algorithms. I believe at this point we may have the largest quantum information science theory group in the country.

My own research, which is theoretical as well, also spans all these areas. In my group, we like to work on a variety of problems. We’re fascinated by delving into theoretical aspects of quantum information science, thinking about quantum algorithms and applications,

and collaborating with experimental groups to understand the intricacies of physical quantum information processing platforms and how we can control them better. Quantum information is very delicate and fragile, and designing the control fields that control and protect this information is an important, but also difficult, problem.

VER: What’s your view on potential use cases existing for quantum technology across various industry sectors?

Economou: It’s too early for quantum technologies to have real impact on industry. However, the promise is there, and the long road to achieving these technologies will most likely lead to transformative capabilities. Industry that uses any kind of chemistry and chemical reactions (pharmaceutical, biomedicine, agriculture, energy production, etc.) stands to benefit from the deployment of quantum computers. Quantum technologies will also impact communications security, which will affect most companies, whether in tech or not. Other applications may not have been discovered yet. Once we have a functional large-scale quantum computer, we’ll surely

make new discoveries and find new applications we haven’t come up with yet.

VER: How might quantum impact the average citizen’s everyday life? How do you envision quantum technology changing the way businesses operate?

Economou: With so many financial transactions happening online, information security is critical for all of us. Advances in understanding chemistry and chemical reactions will also have a potential impact through corresponding advancement of the industries I mentioned. More precise sensing can also lead to better diagnostics and other applications in medicine and beyond.

VER: Your own career has been spent in academia and government research. Factoring in industry as well, how can a disparate group of entities with their own priorities work together to advance quantum computing?

Economou: By nature, academic research is more exploratory and arguably more innovative. Industry has the resources to scale up systems and to solve difficult engineering problems. National labs are somewhere in between. Compared to academia, they tend to have more consistent government support and the employees are essentially permanent. In academia, we have a quick turnaround with the students and postdocs we train, so at times it can be challenging to carry out an idea to its full completion.

The synergy of the three entities can play an important role in advancing quantum

technologies. The workforce we train is essential to national labs and companies. Students from my group have had internships in industry, and some of those who graduated joined quantum companies. Others continue in academia. Postdocs trained in my group now hold positions in national labs around the United States and faculty positions worldwide. The quantum ecosystem, while rapidly growing, is still tightly knit.

VER: How can universities get students interested in quantum physics to produce a workforce pipeline for the industry? What’s the best way to develop the nonphysicist portion of that workforce?

Economou: Students in physics are already very interested. Each year, we have to make difficult decisions in our department at Virginia Tech about who to make offers to for graduate school out of a large number of very qualified, motivated students who want to work on quantum information science. Interest is also increasing from students with computer science and electrical and computer engineering backgrounds. We’ve recently started an interdisciplinary minor in quantum information science and engineering that’s accessible to students from pretty much any STEM field — students from seven different majors can take it. Students who graduate with this minor are ready to be integrated in the quantum workforce in industry or to hit the ground running with Ph.D. studies in quantum information. We really strive to provide both depth and breadth.

For students majoring in non-STEM fields who want to gain familiarity without necessarily learning all the mathematical formalism, we have a freshman-level course that only requires arithmetic, but yet goes into substantial depth with quantum technologies. In this course, we already have students enrolling from fields traditionally not associated with quantum information science, and we’re hoping to expand enrollment in that direction. This will hopefully contribute to what is sometimes called a “quantum-aware” workforce, but also to the deeper appreciation of non-STEM students for how the world works and how quantum computers are built.

Building Certainty Into Virginia’s Quantum Workforce Pipeline

The quantum age is rapidly approaching. So rapidly, in fact, that any approach to developing a workforce must account for the changes happening at the speed of light as quantum science shifts from theoretical to practical application.

That is one goal driving the Potomac Quantum Innovation Center (PQIC), an arm of regional collaboration nonprofit Connected DMV that’s dedicated to bringing together knowledge, resources, and industry across the Washington, D.C., area to cement the region’s status as one of the top quantum regions in the world. “The core of our mission is to look five to 10 years ahead, imagine what that future looks like for industry,

and then work to make that happen,” said George Thomas, Connected DMV’s chief innovation officer.

In Northern Virginia, building this future has led to workforce development efforts that span training for today’s industrial executives all the way to the integration of quantum concepts into pre-kindergarten curriculum. Connected DMV’s NEXTversity program is supporting higher education institutions, K-12 public schools, and emerging lab schools in determining how best to develop skill sets for roles that may not yet exist.

For individuals already in the workforce, NEXTversity program leaders are exploring pathways to credentials that could support

future quantum computing needs, for example. “Because of how fast industry and the types of skills required are evolving, traditional educational pathways are just not enough to sustain and build workforce and talent,” Thomas said. NEXTversity seeks to bridge training gaps by ensuring today’s workforce is able to gain new skills to support quantum-focused organizations.

When it comes to those support positions, Dr. Chad Knights, vice president, information & engineering technologies and college computing for Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA), sees a few specific pathways emerging. Alongside the highly educated theoretical physicists who will develop new quantum models, he expects a demand for engineers who can

build future quantum computing systems and a technician workforce to maintain and operate those systems.

“We have a very strong foothold in the operator technician space,” Knights said. He notes that this strength comes out of the work the college has done with companies like Micron Technology, which produces memory products in Manassas, and BAE Systems, which is exploring quantum sensing in Fairfax County and currently operates in Manassas creating advanced technology for space operations.

“The focus there is around advanced manufacturing and building automation, which rely on the same set of core technical skills that will be needed by the future workforce to operate and maintain quantum computers,” Knights added. “As an example, these [quantum] computers must be supercooled. Technicians will have to deal with a similar set of mission-critical system and technology requirements but with an added focus on supercooling.”

Knights notes that students moving into these roles may not need to learn quantum mechanics, “but they still must understand the principles instilled in quantum computing so that they can apply that logic when we’re thinking about the technology.” To support this thinking, NOVA is working to add topics around photonics and optics into their curriculum to bridge the theoretical understanding of quantum to practical models. “We’re also trying to figure out how we build a pipeline of talent to support the future quantum workforce,” Knights added.

PQIC’s K12 Quantum Workforce Development Project is already developing

that pipeline. Led by George Mason University’s Quantum Science and Engineering Center (QSEC), the project is helping school systems in Loudoun and Fairfax counties train educators and develop curriculum that will lay the foundation for tomorrow’s quantum workforce.

Backed by a U.S. Department of Education grant, QSEC runs several quantum education programs, including “Pathways to Quantum Immersion,” which helps high schoolers learn about quantum technology and careers, and “Quantum in Your Classroom,” aimed at helping K-12 teachers incorporate quantum topics into their classrooms.

This year, students met quantum leaders at institutions including NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Joint Quantum Institute within the National Institute of Science and Technology, and MITRE Labs. The high school students also met undergraduate and graduate students currently studying quantum science at George Mason. At the close of the program, students complete summer projects with the opportunity to present them at the 2023 Quantum World Congress in Fairfax County. QSEC faculty were also recently funded to research quantum education in elementary classrooms through a National Science Foundation grant.

“For our students at the Academies of Loudoun [a specialized program for STEM-focused education], there’s a whole wide range of opportunities outside of the typical program of studies. Those students have been engaging in quantum within physics and math classes for a couple of years now,” said Nicholas Grzeda, computer science supervisor for

Loudoun County Public Schools. Now, the county is looking bigger by hiring a computer science resource teacher whose focus will be to bring quantum more proudly into all schools across the county.

Alexandra Fuentes, program manager, STEAM and computer science for Fairfax County Public Schools, adds that the counties are looking at opportunities on the entire continuum from pre-K through high school. The goal is to spark student interest early and provide a strong foundation on which to move into postsecondary pathways and careers.

“We already have really strong computer science and engineering elective course pathways, which include specialized courses in quantum science, AI, cloud computing, cybersecurity, and other topics tied with high-demand career fields,” Fuentes said. In addition to increasing access to those courses, Fuentes is working to integrate quantum concepts into traditional coursework.

For example, educators can teach the concept of superposition to elementary students through comparisons to how people can experience multiple emotional states in a single moment. Another experiment for elementary students teaches how the act of measurement can change the state of the item being measured by measuring the flavor of jelly beans.

“It’s about fostering curiosity and wonder and letting students explore real problems,” Fuentes said. “When we can connect our students with possibilities for the future, and tap into their creativity and the questions they might ask and the things they’re interested in, and help them see the careers paths that are here for them earlier — that’s life-changing.”

Northern Virginia Community College’s Engineering Technology lab, housed at the college’s Manassas campus, provides training and instruction on skills needed to operate and maintain quantum systems.

Virginia Diodes Works to Fill the Terahertz Gap

Modern life is shaped by electronic devices that employ many frequencies of electromagnetic radiation, from radio and television broadcasts, to cell phone, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi signals, to visible light displays and high-frequency medical imaging. Somewhere between microwave ovens and infrared night vision, there’s a once-neglected space overlooked by engineers called the Terahertz Gap.

Virginia Diodes, Inc. (VDI) is a world-leading vertically integrated manufacturer of electronics within that technological niche: terahertz (THz) and millimeter wave (mmWave) ranges. The Charlottesville company focuses on frequencies roughly between 50 GHz and 2 THz (wavelengths of 6 millimeters and 150 micrometers), and now many established and experimental applications are within that continuum. It is much wider than, for example, the FM radio bands. The company catalog lists thousands of items, and they can meet sophisticated custom specifications. The business is “high mix, low volume.”

Virginia Diodes, Inc., Charlottesville

VDI products aren’t generally the sort of things you’d find in commercially available devices. Rather, as interest in terahertz and millimeter wave frequencies has grown over the company’s lifespan, VDI products are increasingly enabling cutting-edge science in spectroscopy, fusion plasma science, quantum computing, and other fields while helping engineers prototype some of the most buzzed-about emerging technologies, including 6G communications and automotive radar.

Virginia Diodes Chief Operating Officer Gerhard Schoenthal said, “The carpenter needs a ruler,” and the electrical

engineer working with particular bands of electromagnetic radiation needs something similar. “We produce those systems for them.”

HISTORY IN THE MAKING

In 2004, VDI moved their main operations into a 10,000-sq.-ft. custom space in the newly converted Ix Business Park, on the site of a former textile mill. At its 20th-century peak, Ix Textiles, which supplied unfinished fabrics to the military, was one of the largest regional employers. While new loom technologies had helped push Ix to Virginia in search of unskilled labor, VDI now employs more than 100 trained engineers, skilled

technicians, and support employees across two Charlottesville locations. High-tech hardware manufacturing might seem in stark contrast with the historical setting, but there are good reasons for this particular center of technology in Charlottesville.

In 1958, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) set up shop in Green Bank, W.Va. This was accompanied by establishment of the National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000-square-mile region straddling the border between Virginia and West Virginia, in which the Federal Communications Commission restricts radio transmissions that might interfere

Virginia Diodes, Inc., Charlottesville

with radio telescope observations. It was a first for the United States, but also intended as a center of international science.

Over the next decade, NRAO began monitoring millimeter wave radiation and created a new headquarters at the Quiet Zone’s eastern boundary, on the campus of the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville. Thomas Crowe, CEO of Virginia Diodes, attended graduate school at UVA before becoming a research professor in electrical engineering at the university. He founded VDI in 1996 as a part-time producer of electronic components called Schottky diodes, purpose-built

for the international radio astronomy community.

Customers were happy with the quality of the diodes and components, but many wanted full systems, which encouraged the business to expand into new manufacturing in their renovated space.

A RANGE OF USES

VDI still produces radio astronomy equipment, and even sells some of its namesake diodes. But the repertoire has expanded along with global interest in other uses for millimeter and terahertz waves. “VDI is a much different business than 27 years ago,” said Schoenthal.

The company’s mission statement reflects the ambition and breadth of those emerging technologies: “To make the terahertz region of the electromagnetic spectrum as useful for scientific, military, and commercial applications as the microwave and infrared bands are today.”

Radio telescopes sensitive to millimeter waves have helped to provide a more complete picture of the universe, able to detect particular chemicals’ presence in distant gaseous clouds. VDI collaborated on the Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array in Chile, the largest telescope on the planet. Closer to home, millimeter wave equipment is useful in test and measurement equipment and is also deployed in smaller, more economical satellites called cubesats to monitor and predict weather patterns and climate trends. VDI has worked with NASA on a project called IceCube, which launched a cubesat from the International Space Station to monitor ice in high-altitude clouds on Earth.

In the last decade or so, the customer base has grown from mostly university and national laboratory researchers to include commercial interests at major electronics companies. Possible commercial applications include radar systems for autonomous vehicles or mobile phones

and next-generation communications. Continued expansion of 5G services now includes frequencies in millimeter wave territory. VDI test equipment is being used for regulatory testing of current smartphones that include 5G millimeter wave radio. As engineers look ahead to 6G, communications frequencies will likely take advantage of even more unused bandwidth in that range.

FROM VIRGINIA TO THE WORLD

Roots in radio astronomy established an international scientific customer base. Today, exports to over 40 countries are more than half of VDI sales. While trade shows have been important to the company for most of its history, VDI has recently taken advantage of VEDP’s International Trade Services, which offers Virginia companies up to $10,000 reimbursement toward international trade show expenses. With VEDP support, VDI exhibited at European Microwave Week in 2020 and 2022 and the International Microwave Symposium in 2021.

After pandemic disruptions, “VEDP’s contribution helped us get back into action with these large trade shows that are critical to VDI’s success,” said Schoenthal. International trade shows are among the larger events on their schedule, and months of planning go into each convention. With so many existing accounts abroad, these showcases aren’t just good marketing, but important opportunities to strengthen existing relationships with overseas customers and partners across sectors and demonstrate new devices and features face to face.

Continued VEDP support will help VDI grow its trade show presence with larger booths or delegations and improved informational materials. And as millimeter wave and terahertz frequency technologies emerge — as the Terahertz Gap fills in — expect a larger presence at other conferences, trade shows, and expositions of technologies whose engineers rely on VDI equipment.

NORTHERN VIRGINIA

A GLOBAL HOTSPOT

FOR TALENT, INNOVATION, AND QUALITY OF LIFE

Northern Virginia, and the Washington, D.C., metro area in general, represents the country’s most educated region and its top producer of tech talent. Schools in the area are among the highest rated in the country, and Virginia’s world-class higher education system and commitment to tech talent ensure the pipeline will remain robust. Beyond that, Northern Virginia has a long history of tech innovation — early iterations of the internet were developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, headquartered in Arlington County, and the region is the largest data center market in the world, home to 35% of all known hyperscale data centers worldwide. Northern Virginia continues to lead in technological research and development through the federal government, private-sector leaders, nonprofit agencies, and educational centers including George Mason University and Virginia Tech, which operates its Innovation Campus near Amazon’s recently opened HQ2 in the National Landing area.

NORTHERN VIRGINIA OFFERS

A thriving, vital business ecosystem that includes countless federal agencies, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the headquarters of 14 Fortune 500 companies

One of the country’s most racially, ethnically, and internationally diverse populations, with accompanying cuisine and cultural opportunities

A short trip across the Potomac River to Washington, D.C., and its abundant cultural, educational, and entertainment opportunities

We are excited to build on our foundation here in Northern Virginia. The region makes global sense for our global headquarters given its proximity to our customers and stakeholders, and its access to world-class engineering and technical talent.

DAVE CALHOUN President and CEO, The Boeing Company

The 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment has guarded the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery continuously since 1937.

Founded as a regional branch of the University of Virginia, George Mason University is now the largest public university in Virginia. Mason operates four campuses in Virginia — three in Northern Virginia — with the main campus in Fairfax County near the town of Vienna.

The Washington Metrorail connects Northern Virginia with Washington, D.C., and its Maryland suburbs. The Wiehle-Reston East station opened in 2014 as part of the creation of the Silver Line, the newest route in the system.

Alarm.com, headquartered in Fairfax County, provides customers with home security, video, access control, energy management, and wellness solutions through its intelligently connected property platform.

With more than 75,000 students, Northern Virginia Community College is the largest educational institution in Virginia and the second-largest community college in the country.

U.S. News & World Report ranked Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology as the top magnet school in the country in 2023.

Northern Virginia is home to a robust, fast-growing life sciences industry bolstered by accelerators like Innovation Park in Prince William County, home to companies including diagnostic products manufacturer Ceres Nanosciences, Inc.

The Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center, an annex of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, is housed at Washington Dulles International Airport in Fairfax and Loudoun counties. Exhibits include the space shuttle Discovery and the Enola Gay, the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in warfare.

Amazon opened Metropolitan Park, the first phase of its HQ2 in Arlington County, in May. The company has hired more than 8,000 employees at HQ2.

Loudoun County

Economic Development Partners in Virginia

VEDP works in close partnership with local and regional economic development organizations. For a full list of local and regional partners, visit www.vedp.org/Regions

In addition, VEDP regularly works with a wide network of statewide partners, including:

State Leadership Partners

Governor General Assembly

Major Employment and Investment (MEI) Commission

Secretary of Commerce and Trade

Secretary of Finance

Project Delivery Partners

Colleges and universities across the Commonwealth (e.g., UVA, Virginia Tech, William & Mary)

CSX, Norfolk Southern, and short-line railroads

Dominion, AEP, and other electric utilities

The Port of Virginia Virginia Community College System

Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services

Virginia Department of Environmental Quality

Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development

Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transit

Virginia Department of Small Business and Supplier Diversity

Virginia Department of Taxation

Virginia Department of Transportation

Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation

Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission

Virginia Tourism Corporation

Policy and Programmatic Partners

GO Virginia State Council of Higher Education for Virginia

Virginia Agribusiness Council

Virginia Association of Counties

Virginia Business Council

Virginia Business Higher Education Council

Virginia Cable Telecommunications Association, Virginia Manufacturers Association, Virginia Maritime Association, Virginia Realtors Association, and many other trade associations

Virginia Chamber of Commerce, as well as many local and regional chambers of commerce

Virginia Economic Developers Association

Virginia Farm Bureau

Virginia Municipal League

Virginia Association of Planning District Commissions

Virginia Rural Center

Virginia’s Technology Councils

A Hotspot for Federal R&D

A close proximity to the federal government has enabled Virginia to take a leading position in federal research and development. The Commonwealth received the fourth-most federal R&D funds in 2020, ranking among the top 15 states for nine of the 11 federal agencies included in the analysis.

#1

Department of Homeland Security

#1

Department of Transportation

#1

Department of the Interior

#2

Department of Defense

#4

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

#6 Environmental Protection Agency

Source: National Science Foundation