News Brief

The Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS) is a partnership between the University of Maryland and NIST set up to advance research and education in quantum computer science and quantum information theory. It was originally created in 2014 and now has received renewed funding of $12.2 million from NIST to cover the next five years. In addition to the $12.2 million, the University of Maryland (UMD) will also provide another $2 million over the next five years. The center will use these funds to grow its staff, research agenda and educational activities. QuICS has recently doubled its space on the [...]

The Center for Quantum Technologies (CQT) is a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded program aimed at developing novel quantum technologies to address significant industry challenges. Its founding partners include Purdue University, Indiana University Bloomington, the University of Notre Dame, and Indiana University Purdue University-Indianapolis (IUPUI). D-Wave will provide access to its hardware, software and developer tools for CQT students as well as serve on the industry advisory board. They will be joining other CQT industry members including Accenture, Cummins, Entanglement, Inc., General Atomics, IBM Quantum and Quantum Computing Inc. An announcement from D-Wave about their joining the CQT program with additional [...]

Quantum Dice is an Oxford University spinout developing a compact and continuously self-certifying quantum random number generator (QRNG) based upon a technology they call DISCTM that employs advanced silicon photonics technology to produce high-quality, certified randomness from an on-chip laser source. This technology is very high speed and was originally developed in Oxford’s world-leading Quantum Optics research group. The pre-seed fundraising consists of a £1 million venture capital investment led by Elaia Partners with additional participation from IP Group plc, and the UK Innovation and Science Seed Fund (UKI2S) managed by Midven. An additional £1 million of non-dilutive grant funding came from [...]

This network would be one of the world's first commercially available quantum-secured metro network in the world. It will be operated by BT and utilize quantum key distribution (QKD) hardware and key management software from Toshiba, manufactured at Toshiba's Cambridge, UK site. The companies will offer this service to enterprise customers, such as financial and legal organizations, who require the utmost security for sensitive data such as database backups. While the companies had previously installed a point-to-point network between Bristol-based NCC (National Composites Centre) and Centre for Modelling and Simulation (CFMS), the new network will be a multi-point network across a large metropolitan [...]

Although the project will not use quantum computing directly to search for life in deep space, it can potentially help the effort by creating a data base of detectable signatures of molecules that could suggest biological activity. MIT researchers in 2016 created a list of 14,000 molecules that could indicate signs of life in extraterrestrial planets. The E.A. Milne Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Hull will evaluate using Zapata's Orquestra and quantum computing to create a database of detectable signatures using new computational models of molecular rotations and vibrations that will show how these molecules respond to infrared radiation [...]

Members of the Backstage Pass program will gain access to the newest technology available from Strangeworks’ own internal development team and their Quantum Syndicate members. Oftentimes, when a quantum hardware provider develops a new machine, they won't make it fully available to the general public immediately because there may be limits on how many users it can initially support. Rather, they may make it available only to a select group of beta customers so they can better control the usage while the provider gains initial experience and makes optimizations in operating the machine. Members of the Strangeworks program can have a better chance [...]

Previously, anyone wishing to use the Microsoft Azure quantum cloud service to access the Honeywell and IonQ quantum computers needed to use Microsoft's Q# quantum programming language for writing their programs. Now Microsoft has written an API so that user's existing Qiskit or Cirq programs can add a few lines of code and run their programs on the Honeywell or IonQ systems using the Azure cloud service. This will expand the potential user community for Microsoft and provide users with a greater choice of hardware providers for developing and testing their programs. You can view Microsoft's announcement about this development in [...]

Equal1, a startup developing silicon based quantum processors based in Dublin, Ireland and Fremont, California, has received a multimillion Euro funding round from venture firm btov Industrial Technologies and previous investors Atlantic Bridge, 808 Ventures and Enterprise Ireland.. This brings the total amount of funding to the company to date of over €10 million ($11.6M USD). Dr. Christian Reitberger, partner at btov, has joined Equal1's Board of Directors and Declan O’Mahoney has been appointed as Equal's Non-Executive Chairman of its Board of Directors. Equal1 has been developing a quantum processor based upon spin qubit technology that operates at a relatively warm [...]

In addition to the new funding of A$15 million the company is seeking to raise an additional A$5 million ($3.6 million) from existing eligible shareholders who are residents of Australia or New Zealand. The funds will be used to continue development of Archer’s 12CQ quantum computing chip and lab-on-a-chip biochip technologies, infrastructure and facilities, protecting Archer's intellectual property, establishing and strengthening commercial partnerships and general working capital. Additional information about this new share placement can be found in a news release posted on the Archer website here. October 4, 2021

We had reported in January about plans of the German state of Bavaria to create a Munich Quantum Valley program and have just announced this first release of funding from the Bavarian State Ministry for Science and Art. These funds will extend through 2024 with additional funds release anticipated in the future. Participants in the program include the Bavarian Academy of Sciences BAdW), the Fraunhofer Society, the Max Planck Society, Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich (LMU), the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU) and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Goals of the project include developing [...]