Illinois is building a quantum workforce to develop the state as a global destination for emerging technology, with Bloomington-Normal among the locations chosen to promote the new initiative.
The Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park [IQMP], a quantum business park backed by the state about two years ago, is starting a new campaign called “Quantum Across Illinois.” It includes a series of visits to Illinois universities to recruit new college graduates to careers in the field.
Illinois State University will have its visit at 5 p.m. April 28. The event at Moulton Hall is open to the campus community.
Emily Easton is director of education and workforce development at the Chicago Quantum Exchange [CQE] that is partnering with the Illinois Economic Development Council.
“IQMP is a really a first-of-its kind public, private partnership that’s designed to accelerate the development of quantum technologies,” Easton said in an interview on WGLT’s Sound Ideas.
“It has a few different quantum-focused companies that are going to be located there, including PsiQuantum as well as Inflection will be building their quantum computing headquarters at the IQMP.”
What is quantum technology?
Those newly built spaces are going to need employees prepared to work in quantum technology, a science of what happens all the way down to the atomic level where matter is able to be manipulated.
“And so, one of the things I like to use to explain to people on the three fundamental principles of quantum science, which is based on quantum physics, is if you’re to picture flipping a quarter, well that quarter’s in the air. You’re not really sure whether it’s heads or it’s tails,” Easton said.
“Those multiple states can be very, very useful in how we can exploit them technologically. So, one of the challenges of quantum information science and engineering is keeping particles in those multiple states, and that’s very difficult because particles, even just observing them in that multiple state, can cause them to collapse and choose one state or another.”
Another fundamental principle of the science, known as entanglement, is used in the technology, or keeping the particles entangled to influence or understand each other’s behavior.
Easton said “…even if they’re across a room or across a universe. And these principles and ideas have been around for a very long time, but it’s only recently that we as humans have had the technology to manipulate, exploit and understand what’s really going on and that’s unlocked a really large range of potential applications in a lot of different fields.”
Applicable fields
Easton said one of the biggest impacts for new quantum technology is in health care, where she said the discovery of new drugs has been greatly accelerated.
“Right now, the process of understanding how proteins are going to react or how catalysts can be synthesized takes a very long time, but quantum computing offers the potential to speed that up really radically,” she said.
“Another really interesting use case comes from multi-variable problems, and a good example of a multi-variable problem in insurance is all state insurance as pictures of everybody’s roof, as well as a bunch of data on weather projections.”
According to Easton, quantum technology has the potential to let a state predict the impact of incoming weather based on the understanding of a home’s roof. Then, insurance companies could further individualize home insurance premiums based on that projection.
While health care is one already developing industry for quantum, Easton said the range of possibilities “really is endless.”
“When we look at the broader industry, there are implications for logistics, for how we think about solving climate change, how we think about diagnosing disease, how we think about our financial transactions, how we think about cybersecurity,” she said.
Recruiting college students
In its partnership, CQE is visiting colleges across Illinois. Easton said a big misconception about quantum is it requires employees to have strong backgrounds in only physics or engineering.
ISU debuted its new engineering school this academic year.
She said the initiative wants employees with a much wider skill set.
“So, people who are trained in mechanical engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering are very in demand for a lot of these quantum careers,” she said. “Also, we’re seeing a wide range for people who are able to do things like science communication, or able to speak effectively to policy makers or helping with manufacturing.”
Supplies for quantum technology are made overseas, requiring advanced manufacturing to try and develop the same supplies domestically.
Quantum Across Illinois hopes to bridge the gap between the emerging workforce from universities and the emerging technology from quantum physics.
“So, we’re excited to start to connect those companies with those institutions to make sure everybody’s aware of the opportunities, that both our students understand that there is a wider range of quantum jobs, but also make sure all of our companies understand the rich, deep base of talent we’ve got statewide,” said Easton.
Generally, Easton said engineering jobs will bring recruits to Chicago to be in IQMP, but other jobs such as software development would have remote opportunities.
Future development
As quantum technology begins to take shape, Easton said the next 10 or 20 years will require strong STEM literacy for students interested in these careers.
“So, for all of the talks that I do where people are encouraging me of how they can get their children or even their grandchildren into quantum, I want to say encouraging that STEM literacy is incredibly important because those STEM skill sets are very much in demand in the American workforce and offer a real opportunity by leveraging quantum to get more students thinking about those types of career paths,” she said.
Also on the horizon are concerns the AI bubble will burst, or according to one NPR report, the fear that demand will outpace current offerings from the technology.
Easton said there is a valid concern of a quantum bubble bursting, but she pushes back against it.
“I will offer the quantum industry has been steadily growing for many years now and, if anything, the predictions of when these technologies will be ready has gotten shorter and shorter,” she said. “So, while we’re always on the lookout for anything that might change that trend, as of now, the trends are very positive.”
Easton said just as the early days of the internet led to services such as Uber or Airbnb decades later; quantum has the opportunity to lead to unpredictable advances in the workforce.
