FST JOURNAL

Summary:

• The Hubs have proven to be a good model for getting industry engagement alongside support and funding from different parts of UKRI
• We now need to see how much of this progress gets picked up by the new government 
• It’s important to think of the challenge of translational research from the academic community as a team game
• Quantum technology is really about how we harness the quantum effect using a range of technologies
• We want to have a continuing discussion and dialog with the STEM, policy and industry community on the role that infrastructure has in helping quantum deliver promises.

Where are we now with quantum? We have had 10 years of the National Quantum Technology programme, including two phases of the current Hubs covering everything from quantum computing, quantum sensing to quantum communications. The thing I am most proud of for the Hubs is the way they have managed to get technologies out of the laboratory towards the hands of users. If you had asked me 10 years ago if I had expected to see cold atoms on ships, trains and vehicles, I would have said ‘no way’, but that's the sort of level of demonstration we are now getting. 

We are seeing these technologies working outside of the laboratory, and that is an amazingly good result. The Hubs have proven to be a good model for getting industry engagement with support and funding from different parts of UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) as well as other government departments, and we are seeing a number of very good training opportunities for people in Applied Research. They are not just doing PhDs in fundamental physics, but actually looking at PhDs based on the application of Quantum Technologies. Those people are then also going out into the workplace and some of the Hubs are keeping tabs on where they are going so that we can track their impact. A large number of them are either going into academic appointments, engineering departments or into industry, so we are seeing the beginnings of the availability of higher level skills that the quantum ecosystem will need if it is to be successful going forward. 

We are not alone

The Hubs have strengthened the alignment within the academic community, bringing together universities with different skill sets and in different regions. This has proven, (with alignment of funding) to be a very successful model. It is good to see that the new Hubs, to be launched by the end of 2024, already have a strong level of industry engagement and industry commitment and we also had an ongoing commitment from the last government through its quantum technology strategy and the missions they launched. We now need to see how much of that strategy and set of ambitions gets picked up by the new government. 

 I think that there was a lot of skepticism around the world about whether Quantum Technologies were going to get there. However, I think that that skepticism is now reducing. Now everybody wants to pile in on the initial successes and there is a lot of money going into quantum around the world. What we need to do now is make sure that we continue to accelerate the benefits from the investment that the we have made in the UK over the past 10 years.

 The challenge of transition

 There is, of course, still a challenge of translational research from the academic community into industry. It's important thing to think of it as a team game. We've got the universities which are very good at discovery, research and lab based technical demonstrations. We've got industry who want products. They want things that they can manufacture or exploit in other ways to make money from. The Hubs have been good at doing proof of concept demonstration and starting to look at the technology development that's necessary on this trajectory towards products and services. However, there is still often a gap in the middle and you need to go around a loop of analysis that says, ‘Is this technology ready yet?’ ‘Is it good enough for this application?’ ‘Can I make it?’ A lot of this is about reducing risk, whether it is a technology risk or it is the manufacturability risks and it can go horribly wrong. I've got lots of examples in other technologies of where things have gone horribly wrong, because you cannot throw this ball over the fence from university to industry, and assume that somebody will pick it up. You have to work together in the space in between. You have to look at working as a team. Sometimes, that gap is a bit too big for a university department to talk to a big company but there are organisations, that I would consider third sector, who can facilitate this process. I was visiting the Fraunhofer Centre here in Glasgow today, and they are an organisation that can speak the language and understand the needs of industry. They can also look into academia and understand that language and therefore they can problem solve. In turn, this problem solving helps to close the gap.

We need to keep opportunities open for joint working. There has been progress made but I do think the potential role for third tier organisations is important. We must speed up the iteration around the loop and help take it from an exciting looking technology to something that somebody might want to buy. You have to do that number of times to reduce the risk. So how can we speed that process up?

 Firstly, we must make sure that we understand the difference between performance and effectiveness of Quantum Technologies; performance is what is often asked for but the effectiveness of a technology in a given application is what is actually needed. We also need to understand the trade-offs in areas such as risk and cost.  And I say ‘Quantum Technologies’ because people do generally think it's a single technology. It's not. Quantum technology is really about how we harness the quantum effect using a range of technologies.

 Secondly, we need to do advanced prototyping. That prototyping needs to be done in a way that industry can visualise how they could pick it up and continue to develop it with manufacturing capabilities that area available, ideally, off the shelf. It's also about how we build confidence that we can get things out of the lab and keep them running out of the lab reliably. I also think that testing and evaluation of advanced prototypes will become an important part of the next phase.

 Co ordination 

The Quantum landscape is getting more complicated. There are more moving parts and how we reorganise the Hubs will change that landscape. There are more people entering it and there are more institutions working in that space. If you're a little SME (Small or medium enterprise), how on earth do you find your way through that landscape? There is more we need to do to signpost to people about where expertise lies, who they can talk to and how they can move technology forward. Another part of that is how you facilitate access to prototyping and facilitate access to skills. Improvement in coordination is something we picked up in the infrastructure report.

 But how do you start to move down that journey of being able to design the sorts of components and subsystems that are necessary to bring together and integrate to develop a quantum based system? Firstly, it needs to be made more cost effective for people to get onto that journey. Design tools can be an important first step. It becomes an even more important first step if those design tools are in some way integrated with the development of the prototyping and fabrication capabilities that we need. Things become more seamless that way. In the Infastructure report, we have talked about the need for open access facilities to be truly open access. Costs of accessing some of these fabrication facilities can be something that puts off small companies, so is there more we should be doing to make those truly open access? What more do we need to do to reduce the gap between one-off or small batch devices made within a university environment, and confidently making these things out in industry?

 Advanced Manufacturing

We have a set of capabilities for advanced manufacturing of many of the underpinning technologies for quantum in the UK, but a lot of them have been built up around other application areas such as telecommunications. The requirements of quantum are different, and people need to understand that current technological challenges in quantum far exceed the current level of capability we have in manufacturing. There needs to be a discussion about whether or not our current capabilities in manufacturing can be evolved into something that is of value for quantum and we need to think about how we support industry in doing that.

 Another issue we have looked at (which has had some push back) is the issue of packaging and heterogeneous integration. A lot of people's view is that packaging is something industry just does. However, in quantum when you have to pull together lots of different technologies, reduce loss levels and reduce noise, then heterogeneous integration may be the only way you are going to get to the size, weight and power capabilities that industry is going to find attractive.

 You could invest in compound semiconductors, you could invest in Silicon Photonics, you could invest in heterogeneous integration, but these are not easy choices, and we didn't try to place our bets in the report. However, I think it is worthy of further discussion about where the opportunities are that would be synergistic with UK skills and existing capabilities, and where there might be opportunities for the UK to take a leading position.

 It's always a challenge to bring together a group of people from very different backgrounds and get them to think about something that is of common interest. The team at The Royal Academy of Engineering did a lot of consultation with small companies, large companies and in academia. We've done the best we can in pulling together this story, but what we need is continuing engagement to really understand what would be the best option for the UK right now. We want to have a continuing discussion and dialog with the STEM, policy and industry community on the role that infrastructure could make in making sure that quantum technologies really deliver their promise.