Quantum Computing: Potential, Practicality and Perils
The latest episode of Celebrating Technology Leaders focused on Quantum Computing, a relatively new yet fascinating career track.
Our panelists
How did our panelists end up in Quantum Computing?
Mariia Mykhailova, Principal Quantum Software Engineer, Microsoft: Originally, I am a classically trained software engineer, and when I say classically trained, I don’t mean violin and Latin. I mean a lot of math, some software engineering, and a surprising amount of physics. However, I learned you can use physics for computation much later, only after I joined the [quantum] team. So, I graduated as a classical software developer and spent a few years in Ukraine working in the banking software industry. Then, I moved to the US to join Microsoft as part of the Azure team, and then, after about four years, I joined Microsoft Quantum. This was the first time we hired software engineers without a Quantum background. That’s how I joined the industry.
Marlou Slot, Ph.D., Quantum Materials Researcher, NIST | Quantum Lead, Womanium: I was a Quantum Materials researcher at NIST and am now diving into the world of quantum sensors. In addition, I’m the lead at the Womanium Foundation, building the future Quantum workforce. I was originally trained as a physicist and have always been extremely interested in materials. I joined the field of design of materials, which are analog Quantum simulations where we move atoms one by one, put them in the spots we want to, and design new materials. The next level will be Quantum Computing doing that. So, this is what got me interested.
Temitope Adeniyi, Ph.D. Student, Quantum Technologies and AI, Cleveland State University: I’m a PhD student at Cleveland State University. My research is on applying AI in Quantum Technologies like Quantum Computing and Quantum Sensing. I also have a background in physics, and I started as a STEM educator to train kids on STEM-related concepts like coding, robotics, and design. During my master’s degree, I learned Python. I used that to work as a data scientist and a junior machine learning engineer for a while. During my MSC thesis, I started to learn more about advanced topics in machine learning, and that is how I heard about Quantum Computing. I became fascinated. So, my transition into Quantum Computing was gradual but deliberate. I began attending workshops, seminars, and programs like Womanium, which Marlou mentioned. Since then, I have had an opportunity to go fully into research on Quantum Computing and AI.
Denise Ruffner, Business Development Executive | Co-Founder Diversity in Quantum: I’m a biologist and still love biology but I joined Quantum Computing very early on at IBM, where I was part of the quantum team when we put the first computer on the cloud. I then became in charge of the ambassador program, among many other responsibilities, where I trained 350 people across the company to speak accurately about Quantum. From then on, I’ve worked at several startups and now consulting for companies. The interesting thing is that as I moved to business roles, I would get inundated by women asking me for help with their careers. It was so overwhelming that I started a Women in Quantum group, and we grew to 10,000 people. Now, we’re morphing Women in Quantum to include other diverse groups and provide a way to support them. So, it’s a really exciting time – the new organization is Diversity in Quantum or diviq.org. So, check us out.
Quantum Computing Explained
Our panelists explained the terms you may encounter in quantum computing using as non-technical terms as possible.
Quantum superposition
Mariia: Quantum superposition is a phenomenon that says that quantum systems can be in linear superpositions of classically described states. Usually, a popular science resource would describe it as the way systems can be in multiple states all at once. It’s a pet peeve of mine not to say that under any circumstances. [tilts her hand at an angle] If you look at my hand now, would you say that it’s horizontal and vertical at the same time? You wouldn’t. It’s at a specific angle, but it’s not horizontal, and it’s not vertical. This is very similar for quantum systems.
Quantum entanglement
Marlou: When quantum particles get entangled, they are not independent anymore. So, their quantum states are linked, which means if I have a quantum particle – let’s say a photon- entangled with another photon, and I give one to Elon Musk and send it to Mars. Then, if I look at my quantum particle here – it’s in a certain state. Let’s say in a yes state, and then I know the other one is in a no state. So, this is a very special property we exploit in many ways.
Will quantum entanglement mean that it will allow us to transfer information faster than the speed of light?
Mariia: No, the change of state measured in one of the entangled particles is measured instantaneously. But you ought to transfer information one party had, which the other party can now interpret. For that one, you need to send some classical information, which means you’re still limited by the speed at which you can send classical information.
Quantum tunneling
Temitope: Imagine you went on a hiking trip, and you have a mountain or a hill which is a barrier in front of you, and you want to go to the other side. So, in classical computing, you would climb up the hill and down to the other side. It’s a bit of an effort, but you get there. With quantum tunneling, you have this magical ability to pass through the mountain instead of going over it. It’s as if you can teleport from one side to the other. Quantum Computing has this secret passage that traditional computers do not have, and it helps quantum computers process information in a super-efficient way. It makes them way faster than regular computers for certain tasks.
Quantum coherence
Denise: It’s the duration of the qubit and a way to compare the quality between qubits. So, coherence tells us how long a qubit retains its information, and this tells you about the lifetime of the information. And it’s a very important consideration when you look at a computer and how it will perform.
What does it mean that qubits are not stable?
Temitope: So, think of it this way. You have a mobile phone call – it can suffer from electronic noise such that your call breaks up. So, qubits, the building block of quantum computers, can also get disrupted. So, qubits are super sensitive to their surroundings such that a small thing, like a temperature change, the electromagnetic signal from Wi-Fi, or even a disturbance in the earth’s magnetic field can disrupt them. This disturbance can mess with their quantum state, so the information kept in them can be lost. So, just like how the sound quality of a phone call is disturbed, the information in a qubit can also be disturbed – this is what we mean by a qubit being stable or not. This is a big problem domain in Quantum Computing, called error correction because when scientists can correct errors or stability in qubits, we can say we now have good quantum computers.
Do we know if time works differently in the Quantum realm?
Marlou: Let’s use quantum to measure time well. At NIST in Boulder, we have big atomic clocks that set the time standards for the US based on Cesium atoms, which is how our GPS works. So these clocks are the oldest quantum sensors, and now, we’re miniaturizing them so you could have one in your computer, in your car, or in your pocket to take with you and have great time-keeping based on quantum.
Now and Future of Quantum Computing
What problems are quantum computers – today or tomorrow – particularly good at solving? And what’s the hype?
Denise: We believe that Quantum Computing will be good at solving certain problems. I don’t think it’s really proven. The area of problems that most excites me for its potential is the area of drug screening and personalized medicine. So, in areas with a lot of computation, Quantum Computing could help.
Temitope: I would say problems that require high dimensional data sets because I worked on machine learning. When the problem becomes so huge, classical machines cannot solve it. So, there’s a promise that we will apply the algorithms implemented on Quantum computers to, e.g., drug discovery and processing large sensor data sets.
Marlou: They are suited to problems that have a Quantum nature, for example, designing new fertilizers and drug discovery, as Denise mentioned. Indeed, we are not there yet, but when the hardware is in place, these would be great potential areas.
Mariia: We expect algorithms with small data and big computation to be most suited. Based on how Quantum algorithms work, it can be very expensive to get the data in the quantum system to process it. There is a lot of processing power, but another bottleneck: how you get the information out of the system is extremely limiting. I like an analogy somebody gifted me: it’s like trying to drink an ocean through a straw. You have a lot of information in your system, but you can only get tiny bits of it. These problems – chemistry is a great example – would be best suited.
What are some hurdles towards a faster progression and adoption of quantum computing?
Denise: There are two issues: one of them is bigger and more important than the other, which is the size of the quantum computer, and along with the size, we look at the quality of the qubits – coherence time, errors. You can’t just say I have a 10-bit quantum computer; another has a 10-bit quantum computer, and they’re the same. Quantum Computing is still, in my mind, a physics research project and it’s still developing. To see a big adoption of quantum computing, computers need to advance. Companies also need to be more open to trying this technology and understand that this technology is going to take time. But the time they spend now on learning about it is really important, so as the technology grows, they can take advantage of it before their competitors.
Marlou: Recently, QEDC (Quantum Economic Development Consortium) reported that the industry will adopt quantum computing if it increases revenue and improves the efficiency of processes, i.e., it can give a practical advantage. Yes, then everyone would adopt it. How to get there? Indeed, the hardware is the bottleneck—the size of the quantum computers. Atom Computing recently announced that they have a thousand qubits, which is great progress, but we are not there yet. We need to get much bigger. We need to have very high-quality cubits.
We also need to build the workforce. We need to have people to work on it. There needs to be enough funding to push all of this forward. There need to be really low barriers for start-ups to get out of the academic labs and make tech transfers. If we had shared lab facilities, making it much easier for young researchers and startups to do this highly advanced research, these efforts would greatly accelerate practical Quantum Computing.
Are there any practical applications of Quantum Computing today, or is it mostly the promise of the future we are after?
Mariia: We are still in the promise of the future phase. We need our quantum computers to be much larger, much less noisy and allow us to run much longer programs to achieve our first practical advantages. We expect that those advantages would be in quantum chemistry, material simulation, and these kinds of areas.
What are some threats, challenges, or ethical considerations as we advance in Quantum Computing?
Marlou: Unfortunately, there is always the question of access and democratizing science. Then we talked about important and good problems to solve, but of course, there are also problems we might be able to solve that can be used for bad purposes, and the main one is encryption. Encryption is based on hard mathematical puzzles, and one puzzle that is classically hard to solve is factoring a number into two large prime numbers. It turns out that Shor’s algorithm, which could be executed on a quantum computer, is great at solving this mathematical problem that would break our RSA encryption. This means that right now, we need to search for alternatives that are safe for not only classical computers but also quantum computers, and this is an area called postquantum cryptography. It is an area in which NIST is at the very forefront of defining the new encryption standards for the quantum age. So, this is a threat, but we don’t need to be scared of it now. We need to act now to create the quantum-safe encryption standards for the future. It is also important for the industry to start early and be prepared.
Mariia: The threats of Quantum Computing are similar to those posed by modern AI but slightly further away in the future because if there is a potential, for example, for discovering a new material, it doesn’t matter which technology you’re using – sophisticated AI or Quantum Computing. You have to think about similar things. So, it’s important to understand what kinds of problems Quantum Computing can solve, not just the good ones but potentially the bad ones, and take care of that. It’s similar to the potential perils of any sufficiently sophisticated technology.
Denise: The threat of being able to break today’s current encryption is a big one, but it depends on mature quantum computers. So, the issue is always when do you start? It’s great that NIST has published standards and will publish more standards. We also have to know that in most big companies or hospitals or whatever, it takes a long time to change how they do their security, and it’s generally a five-year or so project, and they need to budget for it. It’s not inexpensive, and so these are some of the challenges that businesses have today: looking at what the future is, when they need to plan for it, and how they can protect their business because there will be a timeline to act. Hopefully, the company will have updated their security by then, so it doesn’t impact them.
Marlou: Even before that, because the data harvested now can be decrypted later.
Denise: That’s a good point, and so there’s a lot of data harvesting that we believe is done, that people just put the data somewhere safe, and when a quantum computer is ready, they can take that data and open it up. So, it is a big threat.
Training the Quantum Computing Talent
How can we build and nourish the Quantum Computing talent?
Temitope: It’s very important to involve students from a young age. They can start by learning the concepts. So, our group at Cleveland State University has been working actively to increase the engagement of both high school and undergraduate students in Quantum Computing. Last summer, together with Qubit by Qubit, we organized a Quantum Computing workshop for high school students in the Cleveland metropolitan school district. They had a tour of the IBM quantum computer at Cleveland Clinic. We also published a technical paper in IEEE QSE’23 – Design of Quantum Machine Learning Course for a Computer Science Program. It has resources, week-by-week topics, and starting points for an undergraduate to learn Quantum Computing and Quantum machine learning.
Mariia: One of my first projects in the Microsoft Quantum team was the Quantum Katas, a tool for people to learn Quantum Computing and apply what they learned to solve small problems, implement their solutions right away, and get them validated. It’s really important to be able to apply your learning as soon as possible and get feedback. Especially for somebody who is learning on their own and doesn’t have access to a professor or an expert, they often don’t have this source of feedback.
I published my first book in the summer of 2022 – Q# pocket guide. Now, I’m writing my second, which is about learning Quantum programming with more in-depth projects. I like to think about it as a perfect second book on Quantum Computing. Once you learn the basics, it’s your bridge to doing more complicated projects and what you must learn before jumping into research papers.
Marlou: I will share about two initiatives I’m involved in: the Womanium Foundation and the Colorado Quantum Tech Hub. The Womanium Foundation focuses on creating new leaders in the next technology, i.e., what will be big in 10 to 15 years. We decided to design a quantum training where you don’t only code and program, but it also has a big emphasis on hardware. There was a big demand for it because it was not available elsewhere. If you take a Quantum course at university, it is often still quantum mechanics. That need was also shown in our participant numbers. We taught 2,000 people last year and 2,600 this year, including 45% women, which is very high and extremely rare in STEM fields. The next edition will be this upcoming summer; everyone is welcome to join.
Also, in Colorado, a new Quantum tech hub is starting. There is a very strong Quantum Hardware industry here. We should start early to inspire young people to enter STEM. Quantum is for everyone. There are many different kinds of jobs. You don’t need a Ph.D. We must reflect this in the educational system, at high schools, community colleges, and universities, and join forces to put it into the curriculum.
Denise In Diversity in Quantum, I’ve been working with people on their careers, whether an undergraduate wondering what they should do next or a graduate student, a postdoc, or even a professor. People have many questions about the different parts of the industry – business development, marketing, program management, or science and engineering. So, what our group does is work with people to understand what their goals are and what the next step could be. It’s very career-oriented. We also do internships and scholarships where we help people travel to meetings. Still, I think the most important is helping people create a network of their own so that they have people they can rely on and not feel so isolated as the only woman or the only gay person in a program.
Diversity in Quantum is open to everyone. We’re inclusive; we want everybody to feel welcome. We do have a code of conduct like all groups have. There’s no membership fee.
How can one continue to learn more and grow in quantum computing?
Tamitope: Join and learn from a community. I’m part of Diversity in Quantum and a product of the Womanium Quantum Computing program. I can’t talk about my growth in Quantum without mentioning the role these communities played in my life. Another one is quantum internships by QWorld. I was a mentor for their summer internship program, which is very beginner-friendly but is more research-intensive. So, one of the groups designed a photonic sensor for a biological application, and another group designed a machine learning algorithm that’s a quantum generative adversarial network for detecting disease in medical images. So, this is a community where mentors can help you as you grow.
Marlou: Dive into it now; don’t hesitate. It might seem daunting at the beginning, but it’s very exciting. Join a community, join a beginner-level course. All Womanium videos are on YouTube. If you’re interested in software, build your portfolio on GitHub. Collaborate with others. Do internships, and if you’re interested in the hardware side, there is a very wide spectrum of Quantum Technologies and enabling technology like lasers and dilution refrigerators. These will be critical for the quantum age, and you can contribute.
Denise: Quantum is broad, and just taking the first step, looking around and seeing what appeals to you, and going after that is the way to start. If this is remotely interesting, take that first step and try something. If it doesn’t work, try something else. There are a lot of different things that you can learn and that are interesting.
Mariia: If you don’t know anything about Quantum Computing, you probably want to
start by learning a little bit about it, and if you are, at heart, a tinkerer, you will learn better by trying to do something than by watching videos. For example, Quantum Katas allows you to learn the basics and then immediately try to apply them.
Marlou: Quantum is not big yet. It is the start, and if you start learning about it now, you will be ahead of many and experience this whole wave. So, this is the time to join Quantum and start learning about it!