Podcast with Celia Mertzbacher, Executive Director of the QED-C

Transcript

Yuval Boger: Hello, Celia, thank you for joining me today.

Celia Mertzbacher: Well, thank you for having me, Yuval. It’s great to be here.

Yuval: So, who are you and what do you do?

Celia: I’m Celia Merzbacher. I’m the executive director of the Quantum Economic Development Consortium or QED-C. QED-C has been around since 2018, 2019 more formally. We were established with some startup funding from the US government to create a consortium of stakeholders with the idea that there was really a need for an entity that was in between all of the activities going on in the private sector, big bets being made by large companies, startups coming out of research institutions and so on, and the government, which is making its own big investments.

So we’re bringing together all the parts of the quantum ecosystem to accelerate progress to achieve the potential of this exciting technology.

Yuval: What does success look like? We’re recording this in 2023, let’s say by the end of 2024, where would you like to be with QED-C?

Celia: QED-C has the ability to connect all the parts of the community and to develop trust among the participants in the organization. I think it’s really important in the environment today because innovation in the quantum space is happening worldwide. And so the players in different parts of the world really depend on the progress that’s happening in other countries and regions. They recognize that, but especially for smaller companies, it’s not so easy to know where to engage and how to do that.

An organization like QED-C is a great place to make those connections and to find basic researchers at research institutions, to find suppliers, to find customers, to find collaborators to help develop the new technologies together.

No one organization owns the whole stack, so to speak, and so it’s going to be critical for each of those members to have those connections and to know where to turn for the pieces that they aren’t developing themselves.

Yuval: So if you try to measure this, do you measure success by the number of participants of QED-C, Or is it economic activity or is it funding? How do you track your progress?

Celia: I think that certainly attracting more members so that all of the different parts of the ecosystem are well represented and that there’s a critical mass. We’re focused, I sometimes say, on paving the road right in front of us. So we’re driven to do work that is identified by the community as a common problem and then help to try to address it.

And so I like to reflect each year on how well we did in terms of identifying gaps and helping to fill the gaps. And those may be gaps in programs for workforce development, especially programs that are perhaps complementary to the ones that are being funded by governments and others, or to identify enabling technology gaps and help to start filling those, to address the need for benchmarks and metrics and to help fill those.

So, it’s a whole spectrum of activities and community building, and also increasingly to identify how government policies might interact with the industry’s growth as well.

Yuval: Are there QED-C events? I think there are several QED-C working groups. What are the key components beyond the member directory that a member could engage with QED-C? And related to that, by the way, is it only US members that can participate in QED-C?

Celia: So we opened to non-US membership about a year and a half ago, and we have an increasing number of members from outside the US, both corporate members and from research institutions worldwide. And information is all available on our website, both in terms of how to become a member and also a list of who our current members are.

And in terms of the kinds of activities, some of the events and activities are for members only. We have a number of workshops identifying use cases and bringing together users and makers of quantum technologies. We have plenary events where we invite all the members to come together and share ideas and learn what’s going on. We have, of course, a lot of activities that are online.

During COVID, we’ve developed a strong online set of activities. We have six standing committees that range from technology-focused activities and identifying technology gaps to standards and metrics, workforce, even quantum and the law, where we look at legal aspects of the needs for developing quantum technologies and businesses. And use cases, a group that is focused on identifying use cases, which may be in quantum computing, or sensing, or networking, and security.

So we have a very broad set of activities. Again, members are allowed to join these committees and engage and drive the agenda. We are here at QED-C to help support those goals and the member-driven activities. So it’s quite diverse. We have a lot of reports and information that we share publicly, and you can find those on our website. We have some that we only share with members, so a benefit of membership would be access to all of the work of the various committees and the opportunity to engage as well.

Yuval: You mentioned computing, communication, and sensing. Do you feel that membership is larger in one area or the interest is larger in one area? How does the split work amongst its three areas?

Celia: It sometimes feels like computing is the dominant use case and area where there’s focus. Some of the companies are in the supply chain and really cross boundaries. We have laser companies, for instance, and control electronics makers. And also what you would think of as the service community that wraps around innovation, patent law firms and companies that are there to help with other business aspects of a quantum company. So it’s very diverse and cross-cutting.

We have a program that we call the Quantum Marketplace, which is very public. Every month we have a webinar, and there’s information on our website about it. That’s open to anyone to attend. If you miss it, we make the recordings available on a YouTube channel. Those programs are aimed at educating the broader world about quantum and about the QEDC members and their piece of the supply chain or the business ecosystem. That program has been very popular among the members and I think has been helpful in communicating to the outside world what’s going on in this space and where the applications are coming soonest perhaps.

Yuval: Europe seems to be investing a lot of money in quantum. There are broad EU programs and there are certainly very large country-specific quantum budgets. What do you think the US compares in terms of the level of funding and the involvement of government, and what would you like to see different than what’s happening today?

Celia: Well, it’s impressive to see what’s going on all around the world, and I follow it closely. And there are obviously a lot of similarities in these programs for good reason, And that opens up the opportunity for collaboration as well. And I think there’s interest in doing more cross-border collaboration.

The US is making strong investments and there’s a government website, quantum.gov, where there’s a lot of information about the government programs. It also spans sensing and networking and computing as well.

The legislation that created that program had a five-year runway, and that five years is ending at the end of 2023. We’re watching and providing input to the policymakers who are preparing the follow-on program and investments in this area. Based on the conversations that we’re having, there’s very strong support in the government for continuing to make these investments, hopefully to build on what was started five years ago.

So I think there’s increasing government commitments happening everywhere. And I would hope that there would also be some programs that would try to work across borders in all areas to make it easier for there to be collaboration. I think university researchers naturally collaborate with people around the world in their field. Industry is very interested in, of course, having relationships in business and finding good suppliers in other countries. We need to make that easier.

To the extent that there are programs that allow for industry to industry interactions, I think that would be a great addition to some of the programs that already exist.

Yuval: What are you hearing about exports controls?

Celia: I think that companies on one hand want to be able to sell goods everywhere there’s a customer and on the other hand are sensitive to technology not falling into the wrong hands.

Yuval: What do you think should be done about that?

Celia: We’re having a lot of conversations at this time about how export controls might help or hurt. I think it’s, of course, relatively early in the industry for quantum. So that’s very helpful in some ways because there is not a huge existing trade across borders which might pose problems. So we can put in place, I think, appropriate controls if they’re needed. But because it’s so early, I think it needs to be done very carefully because it can also slow down the ability to make progress.

And certainly because of the global nature of innovation, it’s important for these kinds of controls to be done in a multilateral way with like-minded partners so that any one country isn’t harming their own sector and instead is establishing the rules of the road and appropriate guidelines, but also allowing for free trade and innovation among partners that is going to be critical.

Yuval: You mentioned workforce development. What is QED-C doing to help create the next generation of quantum scientists in the US?

Celia: Well mostly what we’re doing is trying to get the word out. I often meet students at conferences and they may say, “Well, this is really exciting to me, but I don’t have a PhD in physics so I don’t think I’m qualified.” And we want to get the message out to the learners as well as the educators that the quantum companies and the quantum ecosystem needs people from many different disciplines and that you don’t need to go back and start over and get a degree in one particular field.

There are going to be many opportunities for software engineers, for people with specialization in lasers and photonics, even people in business and sales and so on, if they have just a little bit of quantum familiarity. For the educators, I think it’s important for them to understand that you don’t have to necessarily create an entirely new program.

You can add a little bit of quantum training to existing programs and have people come out that are very qualified. And to the students, we’re really trying to get the message to the students that there are many opportunities. And that extends to people in undergraduate programs and even people who are thinking that they might want to go into a technical area and get just a certification or some training with experience in systems that are going to be important to quantum development.

Those training programs are on the one hand relatively agile, but they’re also somewhat local because they address communities of students who may not relocate across the country, and who want to get some training and be qualified to work in a business in their home area. So that’s a much more distributed set of programs that needs to be established.

We’re really about talking with the member companies, and identifying the areas of need, the skills and knowledge needed, and then communicating that to those who can do the education. There’s a particular area where I’m trying to focus more, and that is in the area of reskilling and upskilling existing workers, because I think we have a short-term problem while the pipeline gets filled up to train workers in the near term.

That’s something that we are looking to do in partnership with professional organizations and others who have memberships who represent the engineers and others who might pivot into this field.

Yuval: If I’m not mistaken, you’ve been doing this, heading QED-C for a while, and I’m sure you’re in touch with many of the members. What have you learned in the last 6 to 12 months that you didn’t know prior about quantum and the quantum industry?

Celia: Well, one of the things that I’ve learned and that I’m trying to address is the challenge to be a small business in an emerging area. When the markets are small but there’s a large potential, then a company has to invest today with the hope of revenue tomorrow and they’re not making money that they can plow back into research and so on.

So there’s this chicken and egg problem. There is a lot of excitement. There’s not maybe a lot of investor money and especially now it’s getting a little bit tighter and smaller companies just don’t have an enormous research department that they can gear up. And so, how to help bridge to that future is something that I’m trying to think how to do creatively.

And that’s something where I think governments can play an important role by either being an early customer for some of the products, by stepping in and making some funding available for initial prototyping, for instance, and supporting that early stage of innovation so that then eventually the revenues will grow.

Towards supporting that early stage of innovation, I believe that some countries are opening up incubators or accelerators where young companies, maybe researchers from universities who want to go into industry can both develop their idea as well as learn some of the legal and business aspects of the market.

Yuval: Is QED-C involved in something of that nature?

Celia: Well, there are some of those kinds of programs in the US. I was just yesterday at the University of Maryland, which has something called the Quantum Startup Foundry. And there are some others. I don’t have time to name them all, but we certainly support all of those efforts.

We’ve started our own virtual program called Quantum Business 101, which is aimed at startups and small companies to provide them with content and information about resources that are available, whether it’s how to do social media marketing, how to protect your intellectual property, how to navigate the government’s contracting businesses, how to get visas for people that you want to hire from outside the US, et cetera.

These are all part of quantum business 101. The quantum is sort of in parentheses because it’s really basic business 101 information, but with an eye towards the needs of our quantum companies.

There is a national security dimension. We’ve talked about export controls. I think that we again can provide access to resources so that companies are being what I call “business secure”, and they’re thinking with their eyes and ears open so that they make smart decisions as they take many small steps along the way so that as they grow they will continue to be a strong and healthy company.

Yuval: As we get close to the end of our conversation, what would you like to see member companies do more of that perhaps they’re not doing enough today?

Celia: Oh, that’s really tough. I guess one thing would be to be engaged and contribute to the understanding of where the technology is today and to help to draw the community of end users into the conversation so that we have the easiest path and the least friction, as I like to think of it, in getting the technology into the hands of those who can actually use it.

And by engaging with those end user stakeholders effectively, I think it really helps to pull the technology toward the use cases where it can find real business application and benefit soonest.

So I’d like to see that community continue to expand, especially toward the customer bases that are out there. And I think that would be a great success story for us.

Yuval: And last, a hypothetical, if you could have dinner with one of the quantum greats, dead or alive, who would that be?

Celia: I guess I’ll give a couple of answers. One personal and one less personal. Richard Feynman strikes me as a great person to have dinner with. So I would like that.

The personal one is my father who passed away a number of years ago, but he actually wrote a textbook on quantum mechanics and he would be so pleased with the progress that’s being made. So I think about that often and that would be my second choice.

Yuval: Wonderful. So Feynman does come up a lot as an answer to this question, but I think this is the first that your father is going on. So thank you very much for your time, Celia, and for sharing this story.

Celia: Thank you, Yuval. It’s been a pleasure.

Yuval Boger is the chief marketing officer for QuEra, a leader in neutral atom quantum computers. Known as the “Superposition Guy” as well as the original “Qubit Guy,” he can be reached on LinkedIn or at this email.

June 26, 2023