Hello, and welcome to the Physics World Stories podcast. I'm Andrew Glester. And in today's episode, we're gonna be exploring one of the most fascinating fields, which is reshaping the future of computing, communication, and security. That's, of course, quantum technologies. We'll be looking mainly at careers in quantum and talking to a couple of people with ideas about maybe how you could get involved in the field.
This episode is sprung from the feature on the physics world website, physics world dot com, called taking the leap, how to prepare for your future in the quantum workforce. That feature includes an interview with Araceli Vinigos Gounas, and we'll hear from Araceli later in the podcast. But first, I wanted to talk to somebody whose business is right at the heart of quantum technologies. But before we do, just one tiny bit of explanation. A qubit is something you'll hear about in
this podcast. It's a quantum bit and the fundamental unit of information in quantum computing, just like a bit in classical computer. But unlike those bits in regular computers, which can either be a 0 or a 1, a cubit on the other hand can represent not only 0 or 1, but also any combination of both in a superposition, with a specific probability of being either 0 or 1.
The dramatic improvement over classical computing comes from the ability to entangle multiple qubits and the vast number of potential combinations that that enabled. Later in the podcast, we'll hear how quantum computers have the potential with this great power to solve challenges such as developing green energy and giving more efficient tech to power AI applications without destroying the planet. But here's doctor Matt Hutchings from SEEK
Digital Quantum Computing. That's s double e q c. We're SEEK's company that that is developing, chips to scale quantum computers. And so we have an integrated chip, technology that can that can form, integrated quantum processes to ultimately solve, IO bottlenecks and and key key technical challenges in scaling with large large scale quantum computers. So that's what the company does. I myself, run our our kind of product side of things.
So so my goal is to work out how to get those chips into, quantum computing systems, and and developer systems, in a in a productized fashion. So what are they looking for from our chips, and and what what features and and systems do we need to develop to support integration? IO bottlenecks. Oh, yeah. Good question. No. You've probably seen, well, you may have seen, they're getting more more popular to see in in public media today, pictures of quantum computers.
And they are these kind of glorious looking, you know, in the most common format, chandeliers, that you kinda see where you've got this big metal structure and all of these these beautiful wires hanging down them. And they look very shiny and and and very cool, but they look very sci fi, which is, I think, on purpose, you know, from a product staging point of view, But also in a in very much reality, they are
a science fiction technology. You know, it's incredible technology that we're building here. And and the the current state of the of the technology, we've proven it works, and we've proven it can be built, which is incredible. And we've proven you can prioritize something. You get them out there. You can you can access quantum computers on the cloud. But at their at their current format, they are these kind of lab experiments on
steroids. They they've taken what you have in a in a lab, and you've kind of productized it, made it look pretty, and made it look stable. But at the end of the day, it's it's this lab scale technology that's been that's been blown up. So what a quantum computer is today is a is a room scale system Even if they're very, very small quantum computers, in in the sense of their power, they're still room scale size systems.
And all of those, wires you see in the chandeliers are the IO, the input, outputs needed to control the quantum computer. And and today, a single qubit needs an order between 2 and and 4 IOs to control it. So this harks back to the days of early computers where you can kinda remind yourself of those images of of the first, kind of Colossus systems and and and, you know, big computers when they were room scale in in our, you know, in the 19 fifties sixties.
And, and that was the same issue that that every time you added a bit, you added a wire. And it was coined the the tyranny of numbers that that, if I every time I had to add a a new wire, I also had to add, you know, a new bit, I added a new wire or or or etcetera, then then this system's never gonna be manufacturable because, you know, we can never plug in a 1,000,000 wires, you know, and do that regularly.
And that was the famous phrase that you may have heard of from the leader of the of Bell Labs at the time that said, they looked at this system, and and there's only ever gonna be 5 of these computers on the planet. And it was miss misinterpreted to think that that's not that was a a shot against the usefulness of the computer. But, no, it was a it was a a comment about its manufacturability.
This was not a manufacturing system. And so today, you can see the same thing in in quantum computing that they are, you know, room scale systems, huge complexity, huge number of wires input and outputs to to to scale them. And and we are, as a as a society, able to manufacture them at the current scale, but going beyond that
will just not happen. So we are in a situation where we need to solve the IO bottlenecks, and the best way to do that is to integrate as much of the IO on a single chip as you can. And and that's that was for the classical computing, the the integrated circuit, and what we're doing the same for the quantum edge. How's it going? Oh, extremely well. I mean, I think both, in the industry, we're seeing huge amount of of activity and
and and progression in quantum computing. So it's only accelerating, which is which is fantastic. And and there's also more pull from the from from the the market saying wanting access to quantum computers and more and more access to more powerful computers. So in general, in the industry, we're seeing, you know,
really for really positive forward movement. And then for our chips, we already released at the early in the year our first, first ever, you know, digitally controlled integrated chip based quantum computer, full stack. We opened up to some select partners, through various UK government grants as well as, you know, partners like the National Quantum Computing Centre, which are currently having access to that
that chip. And that was the first, yeah, first ever chip technology that was able to be integrated with cryogenic qubits at the kind of, you know, at the interface stage, you know, at the millikelvin stage of these kind of most advanced quantum computing systems, and and do all functionality of of the control of those qubits without, degrading their performance.
And you were able to then run that as a full stack quantum computer, and the users weren't able to, you know, were were not able to see that there is now an integrated process of controlling the quantum computer, not not a remote control controller. So that that's that's really exciting. And then we're on the verge in the end of this year to integrate
more functionality into those chips. And so by the end of this year, we will have a a fully integrated chip technology where we're not only controlling the cubits, but we're also reading out and we're doing other, you know, more advanced functionality. So so at that point, we'll have a chip technology that that mostly eliminates all of the room temperature controllers you need to run a a cubit system. That's pretty cool. Pretty cool. So but you say that the industry are asking for this.
Who's the industry? Who who is wanting Well, I mean, so so users wise, we're seeing more a lot of demand from academics, to use quantum computers. I think, you know, they're always the pioneers in using new new advanced compute technology. We've seen this in across all of the industry, particularly, you know, chemistry groups like that. They're always wanting to use the most advanced compute, you can get.
So we see expanding demand in the academic frameworks, but also more in the commercial space. So so it used to be, Kate, that the fortune 5 100 companies had, you know, a a effort measured in the 100 of 1,000 of of using quantum computers. And now that has expanded to, you know, multimillion dollar efforts, where they're consistently spending significant amounts of resource using and and running quantum computing applications and also bringing in a lot of the
application development in house. And so they're building up bigger teams in house to to support, quantum computing application development.
So we're seeing that in the bigger companies, and now that's filtering that into the small, even, you know, more conventional kind of companies, you know, not necessarily your your giants, are also starting to look at what is our strategy in quantum computing and what resources do we need to be put bringing in now, to to to be able to take advantage of this technology.
And so, you know, you're you're the biggest things that are happening using government tenders to open up more local compute for for wider groups both in the commercial and and and academic frames. But, also, we're seeing more system integrators being able to sell and system developers selling to to private companies, and getting these systems into data centers so the private companies can start to access them.
So I I would say, though, you know, actually, we're seeing, you know, still a large emergence from from academics, but but more and more, is being pulled from from industry wide itself. We're talking, well, I'm talking to you on a laptop. I don't know what you're on. On. Right? And it's just a a fairly standard laptop. Fairly standard Mac. Yeah. We've had we've had some issues with connections.
Is there any way in which quantum computing is gonna be involved in our day to day lives, or is it gonna be always at that kind of high end? I would it's difficult. I mean so I would also say never say never. Like, there's always this this idea that that, we woefully an overestimate the the immediate potential of a of a new technology and and are impossible to to predict its ultimate, you know, value to to society. So it
was the same in classical refute. We we initially didn't we we thought they were gonna save the world, and and then they they didn't. They they did a lot to get us in space, which was incredible, and that was their first use case. And and that was, you know, justified the
whole development of the technology alone. And then now we're sitting with the most powerful computers, you know, billions of times more powerful than what we send in the space on our laps, you know, in our phones, you know, technology that way. No one could have imagined this, right,
when they were building the computer. So I think it's impossible to say, you know, a few, you know, tens of years down the line, will we have quantum computers sitting in our phones, and will they be doing something? Probably. Right? And will they be impacting us? I would say so. So I think the ways we'll see the first impacts to society are along the lines of, how will they benefit applications that that that will have net effect for for the the general public. So more invisible,
but but still underlying importance. So, you know, the first first powerful computers will be able to to to develop better drugs and things like that and and have impact in the in the pharmaceutical and the chemical industry, which would have knock on effects to society. So there's a lot of of potential use cases particularly around green energy and, you know, how we build more efficient catalyzers or, catalysts and things like this, which will have knock on effects to to to society.
And then I guess, ultimately, there's there's emergent view that that, you know, we're seeing AI and the importance of AI emerging, more and more for both, you know, commercial use cases, but but, you know, standard, you know, per personal use cases,
and how it can impact our lives. And and there is early evidence to suggest that the quantum computers might be able to solve more efficient AI, and maybe a more u well, we know that they're gonna be a more universal computer, so there is potential that they can also be a much more efficient scalable AI technology and take advantage of the exponential power of scaling, of the cubits technology underlying it to really
make AI scaling. So so today, you're seeing huge pull in AI, and it's having a massive knock on effect of our of our energy consumption as a planet that the these GPUs that are being used to power AI are just they're they're boiling the earth, and they're only gonna get worse. So we need to make AI more efficient, and and I see that quantum computing could be a a a route to getting there. So I think that would be, you know, also a a a more immediate impact on on human civilization.
But then, you know, in the future, sure. They they they probably would be your friend. I mean, the the one that sort of shouts to me from that, because, you know, where the money is is where these things happen is cryptocurrency. Would that be a similar kind of situation?
Yeah. I mean, I think, they they can they can be one of the main reasons why we're building coin computers and and one of the reasons why we suspect that the indust what the government efforts are sustained in building quantum computers is that we can, we provenly, with the right size of computer, can break Shaw's we can run Shaw's algorithm, which breaks RSA
encryption. So that's, the underlying encryption that that fuels this entire you know, everything, is is is, RSA encryption, you know, where you take large numbers of large fact prime numbers and you multiply them together, and it's hard to work out what the the original prime number is from the thing that gets sent. Really cool code. Really is, you know, pinned you know, underpinned our entire, you know, private communication for a long, long time. And so a quantum computer has been of
the right size. We'll break that. We'll we'll break encryption. And so therefore, governments are very concerned or very interested to get access to this technology because they want to see what other governments have been doing for the last 50 years. And and it doesn't matter whether you swap over your your your encryption today. Whatever you've been doing is still locked stored somewhere, and and will be and the quantum computer will be able to break that at some
point. You as a consumer shouldn't care that much because your data, though you care about it today, you probably don't care about your data from a decade ago. It's probably out of date. So I wouldn't worry too much. But but, you know, we've already started to see the emergence of new encryption technologies coming into the public domain, where it's most needed at the moment, and you'll see that filtering down into your cat videos at some point in the next few years.
And and then you'll be fully protected because these are kind of post quantum encryption levels, and they're gonna get more and more advanced as as the technology advances along with computing. So and and you bring up cryptocurrency. It's an interesting one. There is no proven application that means that a quantum computer will break crypto, or blockchain, the underlying encryption for for for for for for, cryptocurrency.
So it's pretty secure. I mean, the point of cryptocurrency and point of blockchain, you know, cryptocurrency is is kind of what it is, but but blockchain is an underlying concept, and technology is is impressive because what it does is is, you know, decentralize your information. So even if it could be decrypted, it's still you can't go find it, and that's kind of cool. So I wouldn't worry about your your your cryptocurrency assets for for for too long or whatever. I'm not.
Listen, this might be. One area where people can get involved in this and particularly listeners to the physics world stories podcast is to get involved in the industry. Yes. Your company wouldn't exist if this wasn't an industry. Absolutely. Yeah. And we we've we've we existed for we've started in 2019. So we've been going for quite a while now. We're we're one of the more mature in the in the industry, and I think you're seeing more and more companies existing across, you
know, across the the supply chain. It's kind of getting really diversified. So, you know, I'd say back in 2019, you really needed a PhD in in quantum information science, to to break into this technology. And that's kind of where I began. And to be fair, I didn't even have a PhD in in quantum information science, but I my background was in laser physics, and then I did a a postdoc in in quantum information science. So I was lucky to convert in in, like, the 5 years prior to to forming SEEK.
So you really need that advanced degree and knowledge to get in. But I think now, the industry is a lot more open and requires more in engineering level positions. So, you know, we we are currently looking at recruiting or getting access to people with FPGA programming experience and things like that. So more more productized commercial, you know, software development, things like that. So so in London, in Seek, what we do is build a firmware and software to run
our chips. We call it kind of, you know, like CUDA is to to GPUs. We're building, you know, our version of of what we're CUDA, you know, CUDA for running our chips. And and though some of our team are very specialists have very specialist knowledge in core information science, you know, others have have less specialist knowledge. And and as we grow, more and more, we'll be looking at, you know, hiring people that that have conventional, you know, product. You know, they can productize software.
And we're seeing that that's just our company, but we're seeing that across the industry. So more and more kind of, more engineering level positions are being opened up to to to the community. What would be your recommendation for people who are listening to this and thinking, oh, I quite fancy that? The best ways to impress, you know, someone like like ourselves would be to have a a good foundational knowledge of what's going on.
So I you know, maybe I don't expect you to have a a PhD in in core information science and and maybe not even wanting that today, but still certainly helps if you want to to, you know, get into the kind of more senior positions within the company. But I think there is a more and more, entry level, positions that are becoming available to to people with, with maybe, like, non quantum information PhDs, but more
experimental physics. But but or or, you know, this is from Zeek's point of view, but, you know, other non directly related PhDs, but also, if you if you've done a master's in something of relevance. So I I I go back to that point of, I think having an awareness of the technology that you're walking into and and the industry, is the helpful ticket to get you in.
But if you come fresh off the street with with a master's in in physics and and no understanding of what what a quantum computer is, it's going to bode well in any interview. But I certainly look out for a group, you know, people that have have had exposure to the industry and the technology. So whether that's you've done a course in in kind of Qiskit or something like that.
If you're going to the software development or application spends or if you've got a master's, on the kind of, you can do these master conversions at, like, UCL and things like that. And there's there's there's also international master's, where you can even do. I think there's there's opportunities to do something like a 3 month conversion, at certain places. Another way to get into the industry that I was gonna bring up outside of masters is is, we often run
internships. And I know a lot of companies do this this as well that that, you know, for quite a short you know, it can be anywhere between 3 6 months or longer. And and and we've run internships with with people that have been doing masters right through to PhDs. And that's a great way of getting entry into the into the industry. And it's probably, a better way than doing it, via going to a master's if you want you know, you can get more exposed to the specific company you're interested in.
So I think that's that's something I would recommend to look out for. And and I think those those internship I mean, to get on to our internship programs, we usually come from, you know we have associations with universities, and they've come through those universities. So it's kind of a friend of a friend, in that respect. But but I know that that so there's there's other universities that would have relationships with with plenty of quantum computing
groups, so you could go by that. Or I'm sure I've never applied for them, but I think, like, groups like RiverLane do open applications and things like that. And more companies do open applications for internships when they're doing them. So that's another way of getting into the industry. But, absolutely, I would say, you know, now is is the time to to be looking at how if you're interested, you know, it's only growing. We're seeing a huge need and demand for more and more wider
skill sets. So so it's a really exciting time to get into into the industry. We we measured there was 40 quantum computing hardware developers worldwide, and that's just hardware. So then there is you know, I could see there's probably equivalent number of software, developers out there, in private, you know, private they specialize purely in in quantum computing software. And then, you know, same again, if not double in in supporting, supply chain, groups. So, you know, hundreds of companies,
worldwide, and it certainly is global. But but, you know, Seac ourselves, we we we're headquartered in the US and New York, and we've got an operations in in London as well as Italy. So just our company is international. Every every company that there is that I know of has multi locations already. So I teach on a master's in science communication. How important is it really for the public to understand this science? Yeah. I mean, I've always been it's always been important to
me that that science communication is critical. That that, you know, it's not good enough that that, a scientist does a bunch of cool work and then and then sits on it and and it and it's, you know, it goes right through to the science communication of your own work to peers as well as your own work to wider community.
We need to both be able we need to be able to sell, not sell, but, you know, explain what we do to to our peers and that's critical to getting jobs and just, you know, exposing the world to what you're doing, you know. It's not just for yourself, it's for the world. You know, if you're doing science, you're doing it to break the boundaries of what what we can do as civilization. So it's critical to be able to explain it to your peers, but also to the
to the wider community. It's it's, you know, we are government supported heavily. We we we are doing this for for for the, you know, for for the public. So it's important to explain, you know, why is that important and why should they care. And so I think science communication is is
critical. It's actually something that, you know, I learned about science communication and the importance of it having left my PhD my PhD. And I hated the fact that I was waiting until after that to really understand I should be out there, you know, presenting my work and and talking to the public about it and talking more openly. And so I think it's something that I
would yeah. I know more and more groups and and, you you know, like yourself are working on this, and I think it's it's really critical. If you'll excuse me just a moment, that master's that I teach on is the MSc in science communication at the University of West of England in Bristol. That's UE Bristol. If you'd like to join us there, see you next September. But I wanted to talk to somebody who's moved from one area of physics to another. Here's Araceli Vanegas Gomez.
I'm actually an aerospace engineer. I I started in Spain, and then I traveled to different countries to do different things. There was money, and I guess I was young at that time. And I ended up working in Germany forever as an aerospace engineer. I like it. I mean, apparently, we see it was going pretty well. I was, making career there, but, you know, sometimes we have strange hobbies, and my hobby was actually to study physics. That's what I was doing in the in the evenings and on weekends.
And at one point, I studied medical physics, and I I discovered the magnetic resonant imaging, the physics of that. And I started to learn on the free time of my free time about quantum, and quantum physics was really amazing for me. I want to discover more and decided that I wanted to learn that. And so at one point, after I did, an online course, I kind of realized that maybe it was for me that I wanted to go into quantum. That was 2013, so more than 10 years ago now.
I'm starting to tell everyone that I wanted to change my career. So why you have a stable job? You're you're becoming manager in a big company? I want to study quantum physics. I kind of in in Google Hangouts, I think it was, I was chatting to to you see, I can't I can't really talk a lot. I I was talking to the professor from Maryland University who was the professor of this online course that I was doing on quantum, and I was telling him, you know, I want to go into quantum. I want to
do a PhD in quantum. His first reaction was like, why? Why are you gonna quit all what you have? Like, I can always come back to industry. I really want to do this. So he put me in touch with, a couple of people, and one of these people was a professor from UCLA who was in US who was moving to Glasgow. He took me when I think about and I I got in touch with him. And when he moved to Glasgow, he said, okay. You are too much enthusiastic about all this. Come here. What? Show me what you got. So in
yeah. That was September 2014. So you see, it really quite took, some time until people kind of offer me the opportunity to something else than just tell me why are you doing this. I actually applied for PhDs in Germany because I was in Germany, and some people started to say things like, what is going on that so many women are now interested in physics? And I'm like, oh, wow. Or, you know, we use we use books with formulas on it. I'm like, hello? I'm not a space engineer.
Why are you so, yeah, a lot of rejection, a lot of things. But, anyway, I I went to Glasgow, and for 1 week, this professor started to put me exercises about quantum physics in German because I was in Germany. He's like, obviously, you speak German. I'm like, yeah. But I don't speak quantum in German. And at the end of the all that, he offered me a spot for to to do a 1 year masters. And in 2015, I moved to Glasgow to do 1 year masters. And at the end of that master, he
came to me and said, hey. You still want to do your PhD? And I'm like, obviously. He offered me the PhD, and I did my PhD, and I finished in actually 4 days before the lockdown in 2020. That's when I when I did that in I changed my career from industry to academia, but I I kind of changed my career again. Okay. Can I just be before we do that, are you still interested in the space stuff, or did you just go, right, I'm
not doing that anymore? Always. But I I realized that I like that's exactly the thing. I like the space stuff, but helicopters and airplanes is like, nah. So what what so what is it about I mean, you say the MRI and that sort of thing, but what is it about quantum that really attracted you? For me, it was the fact that at that scale of
matter, the things behave completely different. The the phenomena that happen there, we cannot really feel in the microscopic world, and on top of that, the mathematics is kind of different. You do when you when you study engineering, you you study algebra, and the question always is, why do we study this? And people say, well, maybe you use it. Nobody uses linear algebra ever again.
And when I discovered that the mathematics of quantum physics actually uses linear algebra, and it was something that I actually like, I was like, wow. The mathematics of it is, is fascinating. It's you need to think in a different way. It's very abstract. I asked a friend of mine who was the only physicist I I knew at the time. And my question to him is, can you tell me more about this hyperspace and the mathematics for quantum? And his answer was, oh,
come on. That's the very hard stuff. Alright. Don't challenge me. It it was a lot of things. I think quantum physics in general, when when you are interested in science and you read all these books about you you cannot make things. Black holes, the multiverse, and and fix it. But quantum has that kind of weirdness that you can actually
prove it. Because all what is really big, all what is space, and, obviously, I love space, but all that kind of a very big thing, you can look through your telescope, but you cannot really prove a lot of things because it's just out there. But quantum is inside everything. It's inside all of all of us, and that's why my favorite is in imaging
that. Right? It's like it's taking you the atoms in in the water molecules in your body and realign them so that it meets a signal that you can then put into an image and voila, that's what you have inside your body. So I think I think that's really what fascinate me about Okay. So what are you doing now? Oh, that's that's the the other big step.
You know, it's a you realize I chat a lot, and I was kind of I was going to to events, conferences, to everything because I was older than most of the people that were doing the PhD with me. I had obviously a different career path, and I just wanted to understand. I wanted to be involved in everything. I did a lot of outreach activities. I was part of the, women in physics group. I was doing, student,
activities and things like that. But, I I was starting to hear about this new system that people say quantum technologies because it was 2015. The the UK was the first country that actually put money into a national initiative on quantum technologies. And I wanted to know more about that program. Obviously, I was in the UK, so it was really easy for me to get
involved in that. But within with these activities that I was doing in student chapter study was called, the the student, associations, I could also travel to other countries. So I was starting to see what was going on in other countries. I could even travel to the US, and that was the when the launch of the national initiative in the US. So I was really gathering a lot of information about what was going on in a lot of countries regarding this market, and I was asking people from industry,
what do you think about all that? What do you think is needed? And I realized that there was a huge gap between the mindset of research and scientists that that that they were doing their stuff, but they would have to send that to industry, and they couldn't speak the same language. So we're in the in the quantum flagship in the European quantum flagship lounge in Vienna in 2018, I remember being with someone from industry and someone from academia, and they couldn't
understand each other. They were speaking different languages. And I was in the middle, and I could understand both. And I'm like, that's actually quite helpful. I didn't know what I wanted to do next, but I didn't want to stay in academia. I didn't want to come back to Airbus. And I started to well, I talked to the people, yeah, at the UK quantum program, in the European quantum program. But when I went to the US, someone came to me, thanks to social media
because yeah. He said, oh, you are the one kind of reposting all things about quantum. So social media helps. He became a mentor, supported me to apply for a fellowship. I applied for an optical fellowship from the US, and I got it in 2019. They called me the quantum ambassador, and thanks to that, I could actually create my own
company. I created my own company with the aim to bridge this gap between academia and industry to actually break the barriers of the quantum language so that people understand it's not all, oh, very nice words that we don't know what it means. Nobody understands how the mechanics what it's all about. No. It's about how can we apply the technology that is gonna come, how industry can become ready for that. Since then, I'm the CEO of this company.
I'm supposed to be an an entrepreneur, so it has been 5 years. A lot of ups and downs because not everyone is ready for quantum. So it's you need to adapt to the market because it's a very nice very new market emerging. The, people really need to to start creating that awareness is is key, right, to to be able to to make that learning path. What are the kind of most exciting areas where you can apply quantum to industry?
I think everywhere really is, the same thing that the first kind of a first quantum technology that we are using, that is lasers, magnetism and imaging, the GPS, the transistors in your computers, they are everywhere. Nobody's saying, oh, we are using quantum technology 1.0. Right? Now people are saying quantum technology is 2.0. But the thing is that this technology is gonna be really transformative because we are talking about computing, very powerful computation.
So very difficult problems that we cannot solve now, we will be or we might be able to be, solve solving these problems with quantum computers. We will have quantum communication, very secure communication. All the encryption that we have, it will be secure. The one that we have now is not so secure anymore. We'll have sensors that can be applied to absolutely everything. And coming from outer space, sensors is everything. Right? You want to measure any
physical property. Being able to measure things much better so that it give you better sensitivity. For example, in health care, you have, something that measures your the magnetic field in your brain. 1st, it can help to detect illnesses like, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's much better. It could transform health care in general, but it could actually just improve what we have right now. Imagine a medical resident imaging device that is gonna be just like a
small helmet. So for children, it's much better than putting them into this big machine. So it's about improving a lot of things that we have right now. It's about new devices. We know already how they are gonna be applied. But the most exciting part is so many unknowns. Because, again, we are, like, in the fifties of last decade with quant with sorry. With classical computing. Nobody could imagine that we were gonna have a computer in our pockets
now. So imagine how many are loans are right now with quantum technologies. So, yeah, banking, energy, health care, absolutely, each business sector can benefit. Sometimes, when we do our trainees now, we have in front of us people that are CEOs, CIOs from different companies, and then you have someone, I work in retail. What what
how quantum can be applied? And you can't always find something because it's it's really about understanding a little bit what could be those kind of problems that they would like to solve, either that they could like to solve it because they cannot know or they could solve it faster or better giving them this business advantage. So is that is that what you're doing with the business? You're sort of bridging the gap in that way. You're telling people that they need Quantum?
The focus really is on on skills, talent, and education. That means from awareness, just about what is all about quantum, how can I get prepared, why are we talking about this, who is doing what in the ecosystem, who is putting money into that, very general awareness, and then going into more? For me, it's like imagine 3 different axis. It's like, how much do you know already about quantum?
Who you are? Because it's not the same if you if you talk to a CEO of a bank or if you talk to someone that is already technical, from the energy sector. So the the kind of speech changes a lot. Right? And and the third one is at at the end of the day, the the business sector where you're working. Right? So if I'm talking to to someone that is, very high level, that knows nothing about quantum, I cannot go and speak about a Qubit directly because this person would be like, why
are you talking to me about that? They want to know first what is all about quantum. And the second step will be, okay, what is it for me? That is, understanding the different business, businesses and how the the potential of the quantum technologies for these different business sectors. We are doing that. And then once people are kind of hooked into into that, we kind of could offer more training, training that is really applied for their business sector.
For example, quantum computing for finance or, quantum sensing for defense, things like that. So a lot of education program. But we can also support them on consulting services. For example, they might know of a problem already that they cannot solve, and they want to, to do a market research where we we could or not find how quantum technologies could support on that. Or the other thing is I have this business. How do you think that we could
fit within the supply chain? Because, obviously, a lot of people are doing things that somehow they are gonna be feeding in the whole supply chain, like lasers, cryogenics, and all all the things. So that's kind of, how our core business is, the the education training part, and then the the business, consulting. Then, then what happened is, in the in the last years, because we have been so much involved in education, we don't only
focus on businesses. We have been working on education on different levels. We work with schools, on on outreach activities, bringing quantum computing awareness to teachers. That's really, really important. We launched something last year where I can tell you it works marvelous. People have absolutely no idea about quantum computing. In 2 days, they can go and make a small algorithm, but you need to be able to use
this specific methodology. It's like a game. We we haven't done it with children, but we have done it with CEOs from from companies, and it works the same way. They are all really fascinated, and you you can see senior people with with the the stuff that they build. And, can I take it home? I really love this. I've been talking now with my family about it. So that's really what we want. It's kind of, yeah, start up that kind of spark that
that interest into Quanto. And then we have been working with, institutions to support on curriculum building, undergraduate level, master's level, and etcetera. So, basically, we're involving absolutely everything that has to do with Quantum Education or in law. So you did started this journey, like, a long time ago. You looked at quantum, and you had that you're saying in Germany, people's talking about women in physics. Why do we need them? That sort of thing.
Is is it different now? Are you feeling like if you if it was you now wanting to make that change into quantum, do you feel like it's a smoother journey? Oh, that's a very good question, actually. I would have to think about it. It really it depends on a lot of different things. It depends on where you are, who you talk to. Obviously, there is always this kind of people that they are always gonna say the wrong thing. Just last May, I was in an event.
This guy, he was an Italian guy, said, oh, you are the Spanish lady in Tiquant, and I'm like, excuse me. There are a lot of Spanish people doing quantum. Oh, I thought it was you. So you think you see, there there are these these kind of comments and things, every single time.
Going into academia, my feeling is the in in physics, there are a lot of women in a at undergraduate level, but they just kind of start to disappear, later on, less in doing the PhD, much less going into into research careers. I think we we hear over and over again that research careers is so hard, but believe me, I think all careers are hard. It depends how you want to live with it. I really I need to mention, there
is, there is this researcher. She's in Chile, Carla Herman, and she is an amazing professor of physics, and she is gonna have just her 3rd baby. That's for me. It's like, you can really manage all if you want. It's it's about how you manage your your life. Right? So answering your question, it will really depends on where you are. It depends on the region where you are applying to, and also a little bit on how you take all these things. Right? I I'm quite okay because I have been I have been
always in the minority. In our space, we were 10% women. So for me, it was kind of normal, And I I have heard everything when I was a therapist in Germany, obviously, being in the minority, but, not everyone is kind of quite okay within this or or take it more seriously, let's say, could affect
your mental health a lot. So, yeah, I will I will really advise if anyone is listening to this, thinking about a career change or, am I good enough or things like this, Every single person is asking this when men everyone is having that kind of, oh, I'm I'm not fitting here. Right? So just do it. But I'm always happy to talk to anyone. There are a lot of people who came to me, afterwards and say, I want to do these for example, applying for this fellowship. I want to change my
career. What do you think? And I'm always happy to want to give my 2¢. Imposter syndrome is a thing that we all feel. I think men just don't talk about it as much and, you know but it's it's totally there. For sure. If people are listening to this, maybe they're students, maybe they are already in industry or in academia, and they're thinking about changing. What would you recommend they do to get into
this quantum industry? 1st of all, I think when we want to change our careers, right now, there is so much information everywhere. So just use it. Just try to investigate as much as possible. As we also do recruitment within our company, we have a lot of people coming and say, I I have done this. I want to go into quantum. Right now, quantum because it's a very new field, it's very, very hard for people with not huge expertise on the topic to find a
job. That's the truth. Right? I'm not saying that you need a PhD, but 80% of the cases that that's probably it. If you go into quantum computing, you probably need to show that you have been working for 4, 5 years, with Python, that you have been working in industry as a software developer. So it's not like it's such a vast field right now that anyone could find a job in Quanta. It's gonna be. That's why we are trying to prepare people for that. So I'm taking your
question, Andrew. What I would tell people is start preparing your path and also understanding where you wanna go. A lot of people that come to physics or computer science, they don't have that kind of a specific background in in quantum computing algorithm design. I said, why don't you
work in industry? A couple of years as a data scientist, you acquire that kind of experience in industry at the same time that you in your free time, you continue learning about quantum computing, then you will be fit for the job. But it's it's not you cannot expect that in 6 months, the job is gonna be there for you. But there are a lot of masters right now. There there are a lot of events. So being part of the ecosystem is key because the ecosystem is small.
So trying to to participate on on webinars. There are a lot of things online. Again, just, sending me an email. I can send you some resources that just receiving some newsletters. That's really, I think, the the first thing to do. And then what? Maybe you have a crazy idea like like I did, and and you will change your life, into that career. But if it's not now, what I would like to tell people is
that it will never be too late. If it's not now, maybe in 6 months, maybe in 5 years, I think quantum is gonna be open for everyone, and it's just gonna be growing and growing. It's not about quantum physics, remember? It's about how we can use quantum physics to create new technology that can be applied to transform businesses and our society. So let's see how quantum will transform our lives in 20 years' time.
I'd like to thank Araceli and Matt for talking to me for this episode of the Physics World Stories podcast, and you can find that feature on the Physics World website under the title, taking the leap, how to prepare for your future in the quantum workforce. If you are interested in this field, we'll post links to everything we've talked about on the article associated with this episode of the podcast on physics world dot
com. We'll be back next month with something else from this wonderful world of physics, and thank you very much for listening.