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Medical applications
Six teams will attempt to earn millions in the Wellcome Leap Quantum for Bio competition this week. MIT Technology Review covered the finalists who are developing quantum algorithms related to healthcare, including: a Stanford team looking at the quantum properties of ATP; an Oxford team mapping genetic diversity; a team from Cleveland Clinic and Algorithmiq simulating a cancer drug; the University of Nottingham and QuEra conducting discovery on a myotonic dystrophy drug; and Infleqtion, University of Chicago, and MIT mining genetic data.
All of the teams are running quantum-classical hybrid calculations. All the applications must solve a medically relevant problem that can not be addressed with classical computing alone.
Any team that can run a significant healthcare algorithm on at least 50 qubits will receive $2 million, and anyone who runs on at least 100 qubits is eligible for a $5 million prize. Stanford’s Grant Rotskoff described the applications as “at the very edge of doable.”
Winners will be announced in mid-April. Read the full story in MIT Technology Review.
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Diamond supply chain
The University of Chicago touted the growing number of companies in the region developing technology and platforms necessary for diamond-based quantum sensing and computing. Great Lakes Crystal Technologies and WD Advanced Materials specialize in high-purity diamond growth. Dirac Labs and SandboxAQ use diamonds in their quantum sensors.
“Today, a lot of diamond quantum technologies work with very small crystals,” WD Advanced Materials’ John Ciraldo said. “But when it scales up, it’ll look like a semiconductor process. There's a lot of technology that needs to be either developed or modified from the semiconductor industry to be amenable to quantum technologies. And that's a big emphasis right now.”
Read the full announcement from University of Chicago.
Quantum Campus is edited by Bill Bell, a science writer and marketing consultant who has covered physics and high-performance computing for more than 25 years. Disclosure statement.
