Head of Product at Q-CTRL discusses future challenges in quantum ahead of Quantum.Tech

Please give us a little introduction on your current role and what you do

I’m the Head of Product at Q-CTRL, a scale up company that makes quantum technology useful through intuitive and scalable infrastructure software products for quantum control solutions.

My responsibilities include productizing the technical capabilities and user experience for Q-CTRL’s technology that unlocks the potential for our customers to solve complex, meaningful challenges, from new drug discovery to logistics optimization to climate change mitigation, using real quantum devices.

As an organization leader responsible for the Product Management team and accountable to other functions, I aspire to bring teams together to deliver better outcomes (my favorite definition of a leader from Julie Zhuo).

What do you consider your biggest professional achievement to date?

I had the privilege of applying learnings from my graduate research to an industry setting, where I led emerging market product initiatives at Twitter. It provided a convergence of several passions from mobile technology, creative use cases, international development, and the opportunity to even dance Bhangra in India.

What are you most excited about for quantum in 2023? What predictions do you have for the year ahead?

I’m looking forward to the overall progression of the quantum ecosystem. We should expect to see the continued growth in hardware capability. Hardware providers are continuously racing to claim the largest qubit-count for their devices, and we’re excited to help make those devices useful! We’re also keen to participate in all the activity around software and application providers to narrow in on industry-specific applications and use cases, such as financial portfolio optimization and efficient logistics routing leveraging our newly launched QAOA solver in Fire Opal. Furthermore, we’re seeing advances in several other technology domains, so I’m excited about the intersection with other technological breakthroughs, from generative AI to HPC.

On the other side, there are macro-economic externalities beyond anyone’s control. There may be some consolidation, mergers, or sunsetting of tools or companies. As the market plays out, this should bring about more focus for the industry.

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Where does your organization sit within the quantum ecosystem?

Q-CTRL builds and commercializes infrastructure software for error correction, calibration, compilation, and performance optimization in quantum hardware.

By solving the most challenging problems in the field, our technology transforms the performance of quantum computers and unlocks new capabilities for quantum sensors. We’re the VMware of quantum computing.

Will 2023 be a year we come closer to quantum advantage for enterprises. If so how?

The industry is making advances at such a rapid clip that we are getting closer. Quantum advantage is several years away, but some believe we’re imminently reaching near-term or narrow quantum advantage, where specific use cases and applications might see benefits from quantum computers. But one critical ingredient is proper quantum control to suppress errors and noise common in hardware today in order to optimize the performance for real quantum devices.

Hardware error is the biggest barrier to achieving quantum advantage. Q-CTRL has demonstrated algorithmic improvements >1,000x, closing the performance gap between the promise of the emerging number quantum computers in the market and the actual performance they can deliver to end users and customers.

Combining these device and circuit-level improvements with quantum error correction will be critical to making large-scale quantum computing, and quantum advantage or near-term quantum advantage, a reality.

What do you think the key challenges of working with quantum in the NISQ era is?

Along the lines of the previous question, the key challenge is empowering customers to get the right answer on real devices. This is what Q-CTRL specializes in solving. We specialize in quantum control, which stabilizes quantum computing or sensing hardware against degradation to produce meaningful, rather than random and noisy, output. Products like Fire Opal help customers achieve this. We recently launched the Fire Opal QAOA solver, which further allows users to take advantage of hybrid algorithms.

Another challenge that the broader industry faces is overcoming skepticism or assisting in the understanding/urgency that quantum tech and its utility are real. We’ve heard this feedback from customers and other industry leaders, which is why we developed Black Opal, our edtech product, and have continually released new content and features. We just released an introductory learning module that helps onboard anyone who is curious about the field of quantum and its potential impact.

How many qubits do you see us reaching in the next year to 18 months? Will they make a difference?

We are all aware of ongoing news about growing device capability from QPU developers – IBM (433 qubits w/ Osprey, and their declarations to reach 1,121 qubits w/ Condor), Rigetti (84 qubits on their AnKaa devices), along with PsiQuantum, IonQ, and many others. It’s an exciting time as we’re experiencing Moore’s Law (Gordon Moore’s legacy lives on!) unfold with quantum hardware.

However, it’s not the qubit-count alone that matters. These devices are often rendered unuseful due to error and noise, which scales with the number of qubits. A key part of the equation is handling errors and noise in order to obtain meaningful output, and that’s what Q-CTRL does! Our error suppression tools make quantum computers useful and bring quantum advantage sooner by years.

How do you think quantum will impact on cyber-security? Do enterprises need to be approaching this challenge now, or is that hype?

Like with any new technology, quantum technology can both help accelerate a competitive advantage or pose a threat.

As quantum computing advances over the next decade, it poses a risk to some encryption methods like RSA which is used to protect customer data, complete business transactions, and secure communications. There is algorithm development designed to be invulnerable to quantum computers and adhere to NIST post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standards.

Businesses should prepare by assessing their cybersecurity maturity and readiness, navigate or influence regulations, in order to maintain a competitive edge and keep risks at bay. Check out our newly launched Introduction module in Black Opal, where we provide more context about this.

Hear more talks about cyber security this April here

In terms of finding the right talent; how are you going about the looking for the best people to work on your product?

I am keenly interested in widening the talent pool. Working in product, I look for a track record of versatility and teachability, for candidates who have demonstrated curiosity and a readiness to learn and become fluent in new areas of expertise.

On a broader level, I seek out people who care about creating tools and products that are attempting to make a positive impact on the world.

Do you see quantum as a service becoming a major trend? Do you think most quantum will be from the cloud?

Absolutely. My career in high-tech started with cloud-based productivity SaaS tools, and it has proven to be an accelerator for ease of access and scalable adoption. We already see cloud-based quantum hardware and service access available via most QPU hardware platforms along with software tools and capabilities, such as Q-CTRL’s own product suite.

How do you see quantum working with AI and machine learning?

The possibilities are vast with quantum incorporating AI as well as AI leveraging quantum computing.

Q-CTRL has been a pioneer in the incorporation and application of AI to the operation and optimization of quantum hardware. We’ve made AI for quantum technology available to everyone at scale, enabling any hardware developer or research team to use AI to automate tune-up, calibration, and optimization of entire experiments better and more efficiently than they could before, and all without manual intervention. This capability is available as a new toolkit in Boulder Opal, which allows users to accelerate manual tasks with the power of AI automation, freeing up researchers’ time to achieve more and dedicate their efforts to delivering the most foundational insights needed to make quantum technology useful.

On the flip side, quantum computing can provide the approach needed to run complex AI algorithms much more efficiently. Quantum computers possess tremendous potential for handling large datasets that are often required in AI experiments. By using quantum computing to analyze enormous data sets faster and more accurately than ever before, AI researchers have been able to make significant strides in fields like machine learning.

Furthermore, AI systems that are powered by quantum computers would likely touch several technological capabilities as well as industries. Large language models (LLM) and generative AI are the shiny new objects in the tech scene now, embraced by virtually every SaaS company and uncovering new use cases. Quantum could help accelerate conversational applications with deeper understanding.

Industry-specific use cases will also benefit from this convergence. The intersection of quantum and AI could also produce rapid improvement for autonomous driving systems. Pharmaceutical companies might also consider implementing AI powered by quantum computing into their drug discovery toolchain, greatly speeding up the complex process of finding just the right molecule for successful treatments.

As AI is reaching a tipping point in mainstream consciousness, I see a lot of businesses reacting with FOMO, often because they were late to the game. More competitively relevant businesses have embraced and built out internal AI and machine learning capabilities expertise long ago. We’re at a similar point with quantum, forward-thinking enterprises wanting to maintain a competitive advantage in the future need to invest in quantum expertise today.

What are you looking to showcase at our show in Boston this April?

Whether you’re new to the field of quantum, designing algorithms, or building hardware, Q-CTRL has an evolving product portfolio suited for anyone along their customer journey. We recently released several new innovations and new features:

• New introductory module for Black Opal, our edtech tool, for anyone interested in understanding why quantum is commercially and professionally important and relevant
• New fully configured solutions with Boulder Opal Scale Up package, such as our automated scheduler for system-wide tune-up and calibration, to help hardware developers build up their quantum systems and Q-CTRL Embedded, to natively deliver optimized performance to end customers
• Fire Opal, and the new QAOA solver and mid-circuit measurement with multiple registers capabilities
• We’ve also been building on our sensing innovations, announced last year, and are in the process of deploying commercial capabilities

Who are you looking forward to meeting?

I’m interested in meeting with all our customers, partners, and users (existing and prospective). We have ongoing relationships with quantum hardware providers interested in scaling their devices and optimizing performance, which Boulder Opal Scale Up package and Q-CTRL Embedded are designed for, and a growing audience of algorithm developers solving key challenges, especially in the life sciences, logistics, and finance sectors.

Quantum.Tech covers quantum computing, cryptography as well as sensing; what area are you most excited about and why?

This is all exciting. Ultimately, I’m excited about unlocking new use cases and new opportunities for businesses, preparing students to be relevant and competitive in academia, and enabling researchers to make new advances in the field. All of which will bring us closer to the reality of a new computing paradigm that can bring about breakthrough, societal changes.

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