How states can take a ‘quantum’ leap in economic development

Artificial intelligence has clearly captured the imagination of state and local government leaders. But it wasn’t AI that brought CIOs and tech leaders together in Washington, D.C., last week. Rather, it was a lesser known emerging technology called quantum.

Compared to AI, quantum technology is still very much in its infancy. But researchers believe it could have big implications for computing, science and medicine. And some states believe it could have big impacts on their bottom lines.

The emerging technology is based on quantum physics, which is essentially a set of laws that govern the behavior of the very smallest things in the universe like atoms. The science is far from new—quantum mechanics is nearly 100 years old and has enhanced technologies already in wide use, such as GPS and MRIs. 

It is quantum computing that is the subject of all the buzz. Researchers say quantum computers would be exponentially faster and more powerful than today’s. That could be useful in areas like cybersecurity, encryption and research.

Some states have already pushed forward with quantum initiatives, including Colorado and Illinois. The federal government, meanwhile, has looked to accelerate the technology with funding and its National Quantum Initiative.

But states eyeing that funding and the tantalizing prospect of bringing in quantum jobs and world-class research should know it will take a lot of work to build a quantum economy, according to Celia Merzbacher, executive director of the Quantum Economic Development Consortium, or QED-C. The industry group grew out of the 2018 National Quantum Initiative Act, which called for the Department of Commerce to establish a group of quantum stakeholders.

Merzbacher sat down with Route Fifty at last week’s Quantum.Tech USA conference to discuss how states can boost their economies by investing in quantum, as well as the challenges of educating and upskilling a workforce for the new technology.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Route Fifty: What are some of the most common barriers preventing us from commercial and practical use of quantum?

Celia Merzbacher: There's a lot of hard technology problems to address. Some of it is that the hardware is still being developed. [And then] there are supply chain problems. That's partly because there's not really a sufficient market to incentivize suppliers to do a lot of research and development for a very small market at this point in time. There's sort of that chicken and egg problem.

A lot of the market today is for research labs, and their needs are to have something that's very custom and allows for them to do experimentation and flexibility and maybe look under the hood. Whereas, if you're going to deploy in the field, that needs to be robust and reliable, or a technician has to be able to swap things in and out. That's a different set of requirements. Things are not really available for some of those deployments, and we don't know exactly what the market needs.

Route Fifty: What are some of the things that you're seeing in state and regional efforts around quantum?

Merzbacher: The activity along these lines that's been going for the longest is the Chicago Quantum Exchange, which is very impressive. They got a kickstart from some local investors, philanthropists and organizations that were interested in promoting quantum. They had these anchor tenants like the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, and even regionally, the University of Illinois, the University of Wisconsin and others. Then they have these two big U.S. Department of Energy laboratories [Argonne National Laboratory and Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory] that are leading quantum centers.

The other slightly newer, but very impressive effort is Elevate Quantum based in Colorado and the Mountain West region. [It has the involvement of] the University of Colorado and its Boulder facility, which is where four Nobel Prize winners in quantum did their research, so they've got that going for them.

Route Fifty: It sounds like you need a lot of people at the table, and to collaborate strongly?

Merzbacher: From a business point of view, you're going to keep your proprietary information to yourself. But there are areas where you're not going to invent it yourself. It may be components and subsystems that you want to be commercially available, and they are not. Partnering with suppliers and identifying use cases so that you can then go talk to the customers is a common problem. I think there's enough opportunity, and the scale of that endpoint is large enough, that there's a willingness to work together in some areas.

Route Fifty: Investing in quantum, from an economic development standpoint for states and localities, what are the big benefits that it brings?

Merzbacher: Whenever you say economic development, you're talking about jobs, and that's at least a language or a currency that's understandable to everyone. There are a lot of opportunities. There’s the idea of, build it and they will come. Maybe, but these jobs mean you need to have workers with the right skills, and there is a shortage. That's another piece of the equation that needs to be included by the people who are doing economic development. That gets back to the educators, and that goes all the way to even community colleges and people who are educating technicians or the skilled workforce at that level, all the way up through people with advanced degrees.

Route Fifty: So we need quantum to be embedded into the curriculum of school?

Merzbacher: I think that whenever you have a new emerging technology, it tends to trickle down that way. We've done some studies at QED-C of what are the specific skill sets that companies are going to be looking for in future workers. We did that based on a survey of the companies. It was clear that because there are companies in a lot of different parts of the ecosystem, they need workers with different skills. It's not like a nursing certificate, it's not like there's a single curriculum that everybody needs to get and then they can go get into this career. There are going to be engineers, scientists, computer scientists, people from optics and photonics backgrounds, or software. It's a very diverse set of skills.

The outcome of this survey was most of the jobs didn't have quantum in the title, and most of the skills that were going to be required also didn't really say quantum. You could have a traditional engineering degree, for instance, and maybe go back and just get a little bit of quantum on top of that and be very qualified to go into these fields. There are ways to either bring that into the traditional education flow or perhaps offer to the existing workforce access to that quantum upskilling.

Route Fifty: When you talk with states and localities, do people understand that quantum is important, and that it's coming? Do you get the sense that government leaders are aware?

Merzbacher: Awareness is rising. Observation one is, everyone is very, I don't want to say distracted in a bad way, but very preoccupied and interested in AI. In some ways that has diverted attention at the CEO level, whether that CEO is the governor or at a company. All of a sudden, this emerging technology is being dominated by people asking, “What does AI mean for me?” That's understandable.

At the same time, quantum meetings like the one we're at here, you could go to one every week, so you can hardly avoid it in a sense. It's getting more attention, but it's also not an easy subject to understand.

Route Fifty: I’m going to run a bizarre hypothetical. Let's say I'm a governor, in some weird parallel universe, and I think, “Oh, this quantum stuff, I quite fancy getting involved.” Maybe I have world-class research universities, or I'm just interested in it. Where would you recommend I start with my statewide quantum initiative?

Merzbacher: Going to the excellent researchers at the universities is a great place to start. Universities are shifting their mission to some extent and becoming more entrepreneurial, and not just an ivy-covered tower for great deep thinking to go on. It varies, of course, across the faculty, but I think there's more and more interest at universities in thinking about the end use of the research, at least in some parts. In most states, it's a matter of combining the economic development functions with those education and research institutions.

To the extent that there might be a federal laboratory—that's everything from a NASA center, a Department of Energy Laboratory, the Department of Defense, those agencies have experts in facilities across the country. They may well have subject matter experts. As an example, the Air Force Research Lab in upstate New York is a center of excellence, so they would be a natural partner…. I work for SRI International, the Stanford Research Institute, formerly. SRI is a nonprofit research institute that does contract research mostly for the government and has deep subject matter expertise in all kinds of areas, including related to quantum. Those are less visible, but they may also be in your state.

Route Fifty: It sounds like there'll be a lot of interplay with the federal government, like we all need to be rowing in the same direction at every level of government.

Merzbacher: Absolutely. The government has stepped up and created the National Quantum Initiative, so the whole of government is involved. It is an area that is both an economic and national security interest.

Route Fifty: Any final thoughts on the future of quantum?

Merzbacher: States are always looking at it from an economic development angle, and the federal government and this administration is putting a big emphasis on regional development. They've got these tech hubs, they've got the National Science Foundation Regional Innovation Engines, they've got the Economic Development Administration that has stood up some hubs. Everybody is doing hubs, it seems. In an area like quantum that's so new, there isn't a deep, existing community or ecosystem anywhere. It will be very interesting to see if a region like one of the ones I mentioned, or another one, will somehow take its strengths, fill in the gaps and be able to get all the pieces. It Is going to take quite a lot of expertise from a lot of different communities.

Even the U.S. as a country doesn't have it all, in a way. There's more and more understanding that we are not going to be able to do it alone ourselves in the U.S. It's interesting to see how all of these strategies and efforts will hopefully come together to create something that's greater than the parts.