ENDLESS QUANTUM SUMMER

It’s Quantum Summer. Let’s go.

Hi, I’m Austin. I work on standards to improve cost and scalability in the global quantum computing supply chain, from R&D to commercial production.

📈 Scale Quantum, Not Bureaucracy

• My interest is in removing supply chain pain points through standardizing quantum technologies at lower levels of the stack.

• Promote economies of scale without blocking innovation.

• Standardize for economic impact, not for the sake of standardization.

💼 🇺🇸 Chair, IEC/USNC TAG

• I serve as Head of the United States Delegation to the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 3 (“JTC 3”) on Quantum Technologies and chair the corresponding US National Technical Advisory Group (IEC/USNC TAG).

💡QED-C Standards & Metrics

• 2025 Vice-Chair of the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) Standards & Performance Metrics Technical Advisory Committees (TAC)

🇬🇧 🇨🇦 🇺🇸 InterConsortia Collab

• Within QED-C, I lead a cross-consortia standards discussion group with UK Quantum and Quantum Industry Canada

• Together we are helping ensure the voice of industry is represented in standardization, from startups and national labs to established multinational companies.

🎓 I’m just a boy, standing in front of a stack of arXiv preprints, asking myself to read them.

• B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University

• Quantum Professional certificate from Q-CTRL

• Professional certifications in quantum technologies and quantum algorithms from MIT xPro.

• Certified by ASQ as a Six Sigma Black Belt.

Seattle: Leadership and Community at the Edge of Quantum (and of Puget Sound)

QED-C Annual Meeting

| October 2024 >

It was a huge honor to learn that the member organizations of the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) formally elected me to join the 2025 leadership team of the Standards & Performance Metrics Technical Advisory Committee (TAC).

I will be serving as Vice-Chair of the TAC and helping coordinate work across international standards, quantum sensing, quantum communications, and benchmarking.

I’m really just so grateful (and lucky) more than anything else, at the level of support I’ve received from this community. 

At the year-end meeting of QED-C, held at the University of Washington this year, I also had the chance to update the membership on IEC/ISO JTC 3 and the international standards landscape, having just completed JTC 3’s own year end plenary in Edinburgh the week prior.

Seattle weather was not too dissimilar to Edinburgh during my brief visit, but neither was the sound optimism.

Hearing all the TACs give their end of year summaries really verified just how much hard work, nearly all from volunteers, had been contributed this year.

Our feet feel rooted to this earth

and we are spinning in space. What invisible

energies hold us together: Big Bang, Big Crunch,

Big Chill? Each night we stare into space,

witness the pinprick points of the past

just arriving.

Sharon Hashimoto

from, “THEODOR JACOBSEN OBSERVATORY University of Washington”

San Diego: Bringing Quantum to Chemical Engineering

AIChE Annual Meeting

| October 2024 >

With chemistry being one of the top sectors where quantum is expected to grow by 2026 based on a research study by Hyperion, we wanted to be sure the premier audience of chemical engineers were part of the growth curve.

Fortunately for me, I found three great partners in scientist and founder Seyed Mansouri, UC San Diego professor Yufei DIng, and Purdue University professor David Bernal to help me evangelize quantum at AIChE’s Annual Meeting, held this year in San Diego.

We did a high level introduction to quantum computing then got into the details of what the academic landscape looked like today in quantum and, to our majority academic faculty audience, where key sources of funding were coming from these days.

With so many experts in AIChE’s 45,000 member chemical engineering membership, we are hoping this year is the catalyst (pun intended) to bring quantum to the main stage of AIChE.

Thanks for the generous partnership of the AIChE Management Division and the Computational Molecular Science and Engineering Forum for teaming up on this discussion.

Edinburgh:

900 Years Later, Everything Old is New Again

IEC General Meeting, JTC 3 Plenary

| October 2024 >

Second Meeting of the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 3 - Quantum Technologies (JTC 3)

JTC 3 celebrated our second meeting in Edinburgh, a city that celebrated its 900th birthday in 2024. It was a privilege to lead the US delegation again and report on our combined progress. 

In the six months since the inaugural JTC 3 meeting in Seoul, multiple ad hoc groups were formed to address everything from quantum computing to standard vocabularies, quantum enabling technologies and quantum-specific devices. 

After a year of solid homework and foundation building, JTC 3 is well prepared to get formal projects off the ground beginning in 2025.

I’m particularly grateful for the US delegation, who took the time to travel away from their day jobs to join me a second time out here, and for the convenors of the quantum computing and JTC 3 Strategic Advisory groups, whose joint coordination was a huge enabler of our outputs for October.

Higgs Particles and Autographed Chalkboards

Special for me was the proximity of the conference center to the University of Edinburgh. Just a few miles away, it was the academic home of Peter Higgs, whose namesake particle earned him and Belgium physicist François Englert the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013. I had the chance to visit the university, grab a coffee from the student run espresso bar, and browse physics posters along the hallways.

Higgs, who passed away earlier this year in April, is memorialized by several portraits in the department and throughout the building, including his autographed chalkboard, where some of his work is still preserved, still fresh after a decade. You can almost see the chalk clouds still dispersing their way into the universe.

Quantum Tacos

In nearby Leith, the former site of a pub frequented by Higgs is still there. According to the excellent biography on Higgs by his friend and physicist Frank Close, on the morning of the Nobel announcement, wanting to escape the crowds and fanfare, Higgs told his friends and colleagues he was going to go hiking in the Scottish Highlands.

In reality, as the Nobel committee tried to reach him, he was quietly at The Vintage perusing the lunch menu and picking out his favorite ales. The pub itself, called The Vintage, is now closed and its space remains unoccuppied, but that slice of time lives on.

(But next door is a fantastic high end taco place called Paloma where over pork carnitas and grapefruit tequila spritzers you, too, can ponder the magical intersection of quantum mechanics and particle physics).

The Birth of Electromagnetism and a Dog Named Toby 

Once the events of JTC 3 wrapped, I also made the pilgrimmage to the birthplace of James Clerk Maxwell, whose own work unified the physical theories of electricity and magnetism. His birthplace on India Street is now the headquarters of the Maxwell Foundation, which preserves his history and legacy.  

About a 20 minute walk from there is the monument to Maxwell himself, where a bronze plaque of his famous Maxwell Equations sits at the base of the monument while a statue of Maxwell and his dog Toby, gaze down at you.

That makes Toby perhaps the second most famous dog of Edinburgh, the first being Greyfriars Bobby, whose devotion to his human in the 1800s earned him the admiration of the entire city.

Though both Bobby and his owner are both buried there,  hundreds of visitors still make their way to the church and grounds of Greyfriars Kirk to pay tribute to Bobby, leaving piles of sticks at the foot of his grave.

ASQE: Insights on Excellence Panel

ASQ Excellence: Virtual Panel

| September 2024 >

Had the nice opportunity to join quality and process improvement experts Sheila Shaffie (CEO, ProcessArc) and Dr. Rhonda Farrell (GOVCON Consulting) for an ASQE Insights on Excellence (IoE) Focus Study: Quality Impacts in Technology with AI/ML/VR.

Got the chance to discuss quantum computing as an emerging technology and the role of standards to design quality into a technology’s early stages.

Special Thanks to Erin Bauer at ASQE for leading and coordinating the panel.

Concordia Salus: Quantum in Montreal

QED-C Summer Plenary

|June 2024 >

Montreal’s city crest reads “Concordia Salus” - or “salvation through harmony”. 

Harmony was a fitting statement when quantum technology startups, large multinationals, academics, and national labs converged in the city at École de technologie supérieure (ETS) for three days of seminars, ideas and shared visions of a global quantum economy.

I had the privilege of giving two presentations at the plenary:

• The Impact of Standards on the Quantum Economy: A Workshop

• Supply Chain Pain Points and the Economic Impact of Standards: A Panel Discussion

The chance to share the stage and discuss ideas with Canadian quantum computing startups reinforced the importance of scaling with the end user in mind. Standardizing the right common components that span modalities and technical solutions will be a key factor in unlocking the potential of the quantum economy.

Afterwards, we were graciously hosted by institutions in Quebec’s designated quantum innovation zones, collectively designated DistriQ, which includes the University of Sherbrooke and Quebec Quantique, for deep dive tours of their facilities. 

Having a single ecosystem where a quantum innovator can go from concept to proto to pilot to commercial production is an inspiring model and gives us all so much excitement at the possibilities ahead.

Je me souviens.

Near dusk   a perilous time when civilization pauses

easily undermined      animals extincted

Headfirst the squirrel-thing descended

                 scrabbling through ice for a cache

Along a frozen river their criss-crossed prints ahead of me

I came to the scattered once-impeccable gadgetry and wiring

A scruffy grey overcoat trampled and torn

    a larger one nearby golden-red and gleaming

-from “The Transience of Presence”, Jan Conn

What Beyoncé and Quantum Computing Have In Common

Inaugural Meeting of IEC/ISO Joint Technical Committee - Quantum Technologies (“JTC 3”)

| May 2024 >

It was a huge privilege to serve as Head of the United States Delegation to a new international standards committee being formed on quantum technologies. In May 2024, nearly twenty countries gathered in South Korea to plan out the future of quantum standards.

The last time an IEC/ISO Joint Technical Committee (JTC) formed was in 1987 for an exciting new field called, “Information Technology”. The future was definitely on our minds as we gathered to kick off a week of milestones.

This new committee, called JTC 3 - Quantum Technologies, convened for the first time on May 28, 2024 in Seoul at The Plaza Hotel. The symbolism of the inaugural plenary meeting wasn’t lost on me being located across the street from Seoul’s City Hall and the 15th Century Deoksugung Palace whose name means, “palace of virtuous longevity”.

Hoping that the “longevity” refers not to the writing of quantum standards, but to their importance and usefulness in growing the quantum economy across borders, across engineering technologies and across scientific breakthroughs in physics.

I was so grateful for the talented US team that traveled alongside me, representing small/medium sized businesses, federal labs, academia, and multinational corporations. Joining the hundred other experts and national leads, we have a lot of collaboration ahead.

In my view, there are three primary goals that share a common purpose, regardless of country:

1. Scale Quantum, Not Bureaucracy

2. Design Standards for the End User

3. Enable Innovation, Don’t Inhibit It

On my connecting flight through LAX, I saw a t-shirt with a pretty good premonition for the quantum standards work ahead of us.

It read, “Beyoncé wasn’t built in a day.”

I tip my cowboy hat to that. 🤠

Quantum Al Pastor: What Makes a Quantum Computer?

World Quantum Day

| April 14, 2024 >

In celebration of World Quantum Day 2024, here’s a repost of my article from LinkedIn.

The Los Altos Taqueria is busy on most nights, its yellow sign and colorful interior casting bright lights onto the energetic queues that form and gather around meal times.

Located on the outskirts of Mountain View, California, this cozy strip-mall spot is a place where off-shift construction workers mix with Doordash drivers, students, and nearby tech workers, communicating over the percussive sounds of receipts getting stapled onto paper bags and the clangs of spatulas on hot grills. A pair of heat lamps perch on the countertop, warming stacked towers of red plastic baskets filled with tortilla chips. Behind all the noise is a steady stream of regular customers and hard working familiar faces.

I was sitting at one of the yellow formica tables inside the restaurant, pondering one particular feat of physics in front of me: sopes al pastor, a cornmeal disc the size of a hockey puck piled precariously high with lettuce, cheese and steaming Mexican barbequed pork. (Okay let’s be honest: I ordered two of them.)

Through a busy day of meetings, I had somehow missed lunch and was craving some comfort food for dinner before my drive home. The recipes and processes on how to make sopes al pastor are numerous, some more contemporary, others strictly traditional. But most everyone agrees on the fundamental components: perfectly seasoned protein and that solid, sturdy cornmeal base.

While the field of quantum mechanics emerged over a century ago and the concept of a quantum computer is itself more than four decades old, only recently has the transition towards a realizable quantum computer taken serious form, journeying from the realm of research projects and doctoral theses, to scalable commercial possibilities already making an early stage impact on the world around us.

So what are the requirements for something to be called a quantum computer?

In 2000, while working as a researcher at IBM, the physicist David P. DiVincenzo proposed a list of qualities that should be met in order for a functioning quantum computer to exist.

Today there are multiple flavors, or "modalities," of quantum computers being pursued in government labs, tech startups, and large multinational corporations. Some require temperatures colder than deep space in order to operate accurately, some capture tiny particles and magically suspend them in near-nothingness while probing them with laser pulses. Others are based on theoretical particles so conceptually mind-bending that it might stop you in mid-chew of your sopes if you thought about them.

But as different as these modalities may physically look from one another, they should have some common characteristics, according to DiVincenzo.

Seven of them, in fact.

These “DiVincenzo Criteria” are commonly accepted characteristics that need to be considered in order to make a quantum computer real:

1. A scalable physical system with well characterized qubits

2. The ability to initialize the state of the qubits to a simple fiducial state

3. Long relevant decoherence times, much longer than the gate operation time

4. A "universal" set of quantum gates

5. A qubit-specific measurement capability

6. The ability to interconvert stationary and flying qubits 

7. The ability faithfully to transmit flying qubits between distant locations

Wait a minute, fiducial state?

Decoherence times? 

What do you mean by “qubit” and why are they flying?

Some of the terminology described requires a bit more exploration under the hood of quantum computing to fully appreciate, but it pretty much comes down to this: to make quantum computers a reality, we need the ability to effectively create and manipulate a slew of quantum bits, or “qubits,” for computational use within an extremely short time frame before the information contained gets scrambled by the natural world around us.

We’re now at a stage where it’s important to balance optimistic enthusiasm with the real life challenges of standardization, the pace of technological advancement, supply chain maturity, and the capital and operational expense associated with making all this happen.

But the potential is real.

Quantum computing is so much more than just doing things faster. It’s tackling problems that are practically unsolvable in classical computing: that is, computing as defined by everything we call “computing” today.

Working and partnering across countries, industries and institutions, we have a chance today to collaboratively seek a common and constructive understanding. 

Sprinkling in the wonder of a newly emerging field with the implications for societal benefit and job creation that extend anywhere from chemistry, energy, and financial services to healthcare and cybersecurity, we will truly have a collective ambition for discovery, innovation and advancement that will be hard to satiate.

And no single entity or branch of expertise will be able to do this alone.

There’s a long dinner table waiting with plenty of seats.

Show up early and come hungry.