(August 16. 2021) DOE releases Request For Information (RFI) : Access to Quantum System. In support of a congressional mandate in the Joint Explanatory Statement accompanying the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2021, DOE has released the FRI to help in their effort to  “develop a roadmap to provide researchers access to quantum systems so as to enhance the U.S. quantum research enterprise, stimulate the fledgling U.S. quantum computing industry, educate the future quantum computing workforce, and accelerate advancement of quantum computer capabilities.”

(August 04, 2021)  The National Security Agency (NSA) released a frequently asked questions document on Quantum Computing and Post-Quantum Cryptography. The document answers several questions such as “What is a quantum computer?” and “What makes one cryptographically relevant?” Further information is provided on the Commercial National Security Algorithm (CNSA) Suite, the Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC) Program, the National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP), and future algorithms and cryptography.

(June 10, 2021) The Innovation Lab at Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division (NSWCDD) hosted its first-ever hackathon in partnership with industry.

(May 24, 2021) The Congressional Research Service has released a Defense Primer on Quantum Technology. See the report here.

(May 18th, 2021) The National Institutes of Health (NIH) released a Notice of Special Interest with the purpose of informing potential applicants to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) of NIDA’s interest in grant applications that will develop or utilize advanced computational approaches to describe complex drug-disease relationships in ways that will rapidly advance the development of new treatments, allow for targeted funding of substance use disorder (SUD) drug discovery and improve health care. NIDA has a particular interest in applications that include approaches in one or more of the following categories: 1) artificial intelligence, including machine learning and deep learning, 2) supercomputing/parallel computing, and/or 3) quantum computing.

The U.S. Army Research Office (ARO) in collaboration with the Laboratory for Physical Sciences (LPS) is soliciting proposals for research in the next New and Emerging Qubit Science and Technology (nextNEQST) program. nextNEQST focuses on qubit systems that explore new operating regimes and environments, fundamentally new methods of fabrication, and new methods of design, control, or operation. These explorations should have in mind the development of quantum computation where the novel properties of these systems create significant advantages in coherence, fabrication, and/or qubit operation over current state-of-the-art qubits.

Today the National Security Agency’s Laboratory for Physical Sciences (LPS) launched the LPS Qubit Collaboratory (LQC), a Quantum Information Science research center in support of the U.S. National Quantum Initiative. The LQC offers a mechanism for collaborative research between LPS and academia, industry, FFRDCs, and Government Laboratories. The mission of the LQC is to:

A recent Funding Announcement Opportunity (FOA) was released for Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 Department of Defense Multidisciplinary Research Program of the University Research Initiative (MURI) awards. This year’s MURI announcement has several opportunities that touch on quantum sensing, quantum communication and quantum computing.

Although universal fault-tolerant quantum computers – with millions of physical quantum bits (or qubits) – may be a decade or two away, quantum computing research continues apace. It has been hypothesized that quantum computers will one day revolutionize information processing across a host of military and civilian applications from pharmaceuticals discovery, to advanced batteries, to machine learning, to cryptography. A key missing element in the race toward fault-tolerant quantum systems, however, is meaningful metrics to quantify how useful or transformative large quantum computers will actually be once they exist.

Quantum computers are poised to become major technological drivers over the coming decades. But to get there, scientists need to experiment with quantum machines that relatively few universities or companies have. Now, scientists can use Sandia’s QSCOUT for research that might not be possible at their home institutions, without the cost or restrictions of using a commercial testbed.