Carl Williams: Building a quantum-aware workforce

I find the NIST website confusing. Not in any sort of practical sense: it's sensibly laid out - as the online home of the National Institute of Standards and Technology should be. There's a potted history of the organisation and a page for the award-winning work it's done since its foundation in 1901 (safety standards for firefighter uniforms? NIST. Brain mapping sensor development? NIST again. Cures for cancer? Mostly medical charities and hospitals and universities, probably. But also NIST). And if you were so much as thinking about going down to the river this weekend to finally start work on that railway bridge that the council said was 'absolutely, obviously not allowed' but you said was 'your calling', you'd better have your NIST cement reference samples with you, or you’re going to spend the rest of your life in prison drying trains.

The point is: NIST seems to do everything. What's confusing is that nothing about the website's landing page suggests that. It's got a logo that looks like it's been appropriated from NASA (possibly this is a terrible disservice I’ve just done the good people of NIST: perhaps it was those devil-may-care space cowboys over at NASA who pinched NIST's logo, saying mean things like, 'Why don't you invent a measurement for how much we don't care?' and ‘Can’t hear you; we’re in space’). But apart from that, it’s like the US Department of Energy: yes, it keeps the lights on, but most people don’t know it also goes around the world snatching up fissile material that baddies could use to make atom bombs. It buries the lead, a smidge - especially given that it was a workshop in 1994 that gathered the finest minds in quantum together at NIST to talk seriously about how - if at all - quantum computing might affect the future.

Carl Williams, formerly Deputy Director of NIST’s Physical Measurement Laboratory (happily retired as of January 1st this year and now acting as a kind of quantum ambassador), was one of those initial workshop luminaries.

"It was one of those things where you're just watching the field play out," Carl Williams recalls of the workshop’s atmosphere. "The view was that [practical applications] were far in the future. But from my perspective, what it set up was a decision that we really should have a more formal effort in quantum computing - and that effort began as a result of that workshop."

It’s hard to get away from a kind of scientific romanticism, as Williams describes the early days of quantum at NIST. For years, quantum computing has been almost defined by the roadmap: ‘We will have this many qubits by this date,’ says the spokesperson, pointing at the slide, ‘and the following Thursday is when we’ll cure all diseases and build an electric car that drives forever’. Williams’ recollections of the early days feel somehow more exciting. Pioneering. Less like a map, more like fresh parchment.

“I sometimes hate the words ‘revolutionary’ or ‘disruptive’,” he continues. “[But] I think the reality was that everybody knew that, from a quantum computing standpoint, this technology could be revolutionary… The fact that you could play games with photons and send secure bits and detect if someone was eavesdropping on your channel and other things… We all saw that [potential].” NIST was well positioned to capitalise on that potential.

A major responsibility of NIST is to ensure that wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, an inch will always be an inch, a litre will always be a litre, and a second will always be a second. Williams uses timekeeping as an example: investment in quantum would enable NIST to build better clocks, so it was important the investment kept flowing. It did, and today Williams is able to look ahead to the future of quantum networks (“I hate the term ‘quantum internet’”, he says) and the people who will inherit them and the rest of NIST’s work in quantum innovation.

“My view on the ‘quantum internet’ is it's a misnomer and it gives the wrong perception,” says Williams. “I much prefer the term ‘quantum networks’, because I don’t see this as a broad communication tool. [Because] what does it take to build an [enormous] quantum network? I need memory. It needs to be cheap. I need to have compact, affordable small quantum processors for repeaters- and hopefully my quantum repeaters don’t require dilution refrigerators every 50 kilometres.”

Where Williams does see a use for quantum networks is in fields that are more specialised.

“Here's my application,” he says, careful to make clear that this is neither his original idea, nor necessarily the best possible use of quantum networks - but one that is at least a viable. “I go take a set of atomic clocks and I can watch [underground] pressures building up, whether it's due to lava or perhaps the tectonic plates, because I now have the most sensitive technology in the world looking at micromotions. [Say] I do this out along the San Andreas fault. We build this out there and we pay a billion dollars, but I get to a point where one day I can predict - two weeks early - the worst earthquake that's ever going to hit San Francisco. This would be the value of a quantum network, a sensor network that saved millions and millions of lives.”

To get to this level, the world needs a quantum workforce. Seeing the word ‘quantum’ in a job description can be intimidating, but Williams explains that the majority of people working with the quantum networks of the future won’t need PhDs in quantum computing.

“Does everybody need to understand the details of general relativity in order to help build this?” Williams barely pauses. “The answer’s no. We need different levels in this workforce - we need people who are quantum aware. People who understand the general concept of quantum entanglement and can talk with the quantum physicists while doing their part of the problem - which is electronics or control systems or whatever else.”

This evolution of this workforce - Williams advocates introducing these ideas as young as primary school level - will be of paramount importance over the next decade.

“I think the quantum computing companies [today] would tell you, ‘here's how many quantum physicists we're hiring. Here's how many quantum computer scientists we're hiring, here's how many of these we're hiring… But, you know, in 10 years, the proportion of those numbers will change. As the technology develops, we will need more people who are [just] quantum aware. That’s the important thing. Because not everybody who builds a 787 understands why the damn thing flies.”