Interview: Florian Neukart, Director, Advanced Technologies and IT Innovation, Volkswagen Group of America

What are you most looking forward to at the Quantum.Tech conference?

To me, it’s most important to see what the latest status of the technology really is and what others in industry do.

What do you think are the biggest challenges facing the adoption of Quantum technology in 2020?

With regard to quantum computing, it’s all about finding the right use cases. In the end, quantum algorithms and computers are tools for solving problems, but not all kinds of problems. If it’s the right tool for solving a given problem, for example, some time-critical optimization, then we may see some advantages by augmenting some part of an algorithm with a quantum computer. If not, we should use something else. In terms of quantum technologies, I am most excited about quantum sensing, for example, quantum radar. Here, the challenge is to make devices small and robust enough that they can be practically used, for example, in cars. But that will take longer than 2020 – I just want to emphasize that R&D needs to continue and be backed by industry.

Looking ahead a year from now, how do you see the adoption of Quantum computing progressing?

We will see many companies, not only large-scale corporations, get into quantum computing and investigate what it can do for them. I think a lot of people in industry are still not sure what it’s useful for, which is why it’s important for governments to supply funding for start-ups and academia, and to foster education in quantum computing. Still, for some time the practical adoption is and will be exponential. The more things of relevance we (industry and vendors) can show, be that solving scaled-down versions of actual problems for generating intellectual property, or even already solving problems that matter such as optimizing traffic, the more people will be curious to try it out.

What is going to be the biggest area of focus for your organisation within Quantum over the next 12 months?

It’s quantum computing, whereby we focus on four areas: optimization, (molecule) simulation, machine learning, and IT security. I think for the first three it’s clear what we are interested in, but for the latter I need to mention that we know that algorithms such as Shor’s are not threat for today’s public key cryptography considering current quantum chips. However, what if someone steals our data that has been encrypted with today’s algorithms such as RSA, and is able to decrypt it in 10 years? That is a problem, so we are very interested in post quantum cryptography and algorithms that can withstand the attack of a sufficiently big, fully error-corrected quantum computer.

For Industry: What are the most important factors you consider in selecting a new Quantum solution partner?

We built up quantum competency in-house since we consider this a topic of strategic relevance for our company. Of course, we need hardware providers, who we prefer to partner with directly.

Top tips: How can you best engage and support the business to adopt Quantum technologies?

I often think about this, and to me, there are analogies to the machine learning boom, particularly when it comes to quantum computing. Maybe 10 years ago, people in industry started to get excited about machine learning for solving business problems, but only those developing the algorithms understood what’s going on. Nowadays, almost everyone you meet in the elevator, no matter what their background is, can give you a more or less accurate explanation of what machine learning is. I think that is where we need to get with quantum computing. Once people understand what it can be used for, they will find use cases in their fields themselves. This is helpful – very often the researchers and engineers working on algorithms are not subject matter experts when it comes to finance or other fields. Moreover, we need to stop treating quantum physics as something mysterious. It underlies everything, as far as we understand, and for electromagnetism, and both the strong and weak interaction we already have quantum theories. Physicists like Feynman contributed to the notion that it is something impossible to understand for anyone who is not a physicist. In my opinion, that’s not true, and when it comes to quantum computing, software engineers don’t need to understand the most complex parts of quantum physics or how exactly the hardware works. I suspect that a lot of excellent computer scientists would also not be able to explain all the electronics on a motherboard.

Top tips: What is the best single piece of advice you can give to an enterprise looking to start their Quantum journey?

I would say the most important part is to start thinking about quantum computers as tools, not magic. Then it’s important to understand what they are useful for, and what not. Once that’s done, I recommend starting on working on scaled-down versions of real-world problems instead of going through the academic exercise of reproducing all quantum algorithms that need to be taught at university and may not have practical relevance, such as Deutsch’s problem, Bernstein-Vazirani, Simon’s problem, …

What are the first steps an organisation can take to start making their data and networks “Quantum safe”?

It depends on the cryptography used. For asymmetric cryptographic algorithms increasing the key size would also result in increasing the resistance to a hypothetical error-corrected quantum computer with a sufficient number of qubits. In any case, it makes sense to start looking into algorithms such as lattice-based encryption that are considered quantum-secure today, and not only in 10 years. Assuming someone is capable of building such a quantum computer sometime in the near or distant future, we can’t just update our whole internet-based communication infrastructure overnight. It’s difficult to predict when or if it happens, but if it does, we better be prepared.

If you look 3 years into the future, what do you consider will be the biggest impact Quantum technology will have on your industry?

Besides helping us to solve complex optimization problems, I think one of the biggest impacts will be in materials science. That is, finding new cathode or anode structures for batteries, improving battery chemistry as a whole, finding new (lighter, cheaper, more durable) materials for parts.

What technology infrastructure building blocks are required to begin a Quantum computing or secure communications proof of concept?

For quantum computing, it’s just access to a quantum computer via cloud. For a secure communications proof of concept, it may be two pieces of hardware communicating with one another and depending on what we want to show, an attack. If it’s quantum cryptography, for example, we want an eavesdropper listening on the quantum channel so we can show that the keys we generate have been compromised.

What is your biggest professional achievement to date?

Setting up Volkswagen Group’s Advanced Technologies group. That’s not something I could do on my own though, as without the support of my CIOs, my colleagues and team members, this all would not be.

To view when Florian is speaking at Quantum.Tech, visit: https://www.quantumtechcongress.co.uk/speakers/florian-neukart-1