UK National Strategy for Quantum Technologies

Just winding up a one-week trip to the UK where I attended the Bristol Quantum Information Technologies (BQIT) Workshop at the kind invitation of the organizers. There was some disagreement how the acronym BQIT should be pronounced but upon my arrival we instantly all agreed it should be B-QuIeT. The workshop was a lively set of short talks interspersed with panel discussions and it was the first time I heard in some detail about the new UK National Strategy for Quantum Technology from non-other than Sir Peter Knight himself, who was a speaker on one of the panels focusing on the UK Quantum Hubs Network. There was quite a bit of excitement in the air as Simon Benjamin (University of Oxford, Quantum Computing Hub) gushed effusively about writing a 12-page proposal that came in at £3 million per page! 

There are four hubs dotting the UK countryside from Scotland to England with a total five-year budget of £120M for all four of the hubs with foci in quantum communications, imaging, sensing, and computing. And to complement these hubs are at least three new quantum technologies doctoral training centers. The budget for the training centers was less clear but I suppose all together this is close to £200M for five years potentially renewable in five years for another five. And that is, folks, as they say, new money.

All this activity seems to be coordinated by the UK Quantum Technologies Strategic Advisory Board, chaired by Prof. David Delpy, which has laid out a vision for a coordinated strategy in quantum technologies development in the UK.

It is somewhat disheartening to see all of this activity in the UK from the perspective of a research in the US, where the congress and the president can’t even seem to pass any new budget at all from year to year. I wish the UK program well and I did hear that each hub has set aside funds for international collaborations and so I hope this will be the first of several trips to visit my quantum friends and colleagues on the far side of the big pond. 

For young researchers interested in doing PhD or postdoctoral work in quantum technologies, you should follow your noses and follow the money. The UK seems to be the place where the quantum of action is at these days.