Quantum News Briefs July 31: IQM & Quantistry sign MoU to explore hybrid classical-quantum solutions for chemical and material research • The Bloch Quantum Tech Hub awarded $500,000 by Economic Development Administration • Accenture and SandboxAQ expand partnership to help organizations strengthen data encryption today and protect against future threat • Quantum computing is already impacting engineering simulation
News Briefs:
IQM and Quantistry sign MoU to explore hybrid classical-quantum solutions for chemical and material research
Quantistry, a Berlin-based start-up offering the world’s most intuitive cloud-native chemical simulation platform, and IQM Quantum Computers (IQM), a global leader in building quantum computers, announced on July 30 a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to explore hybrid classical-quantum solutions, focusing on R&D challenges in the chemical and material industry.
Through this collaboration, IQM and Quantistry are combining their technical expertise to integrate cutting-edge quantum systems into QuantistryLab, Quantistry’s chemical simulation platform.
“The growing collaboration with IQM strengthens Quantistry’s commitment to reshape chemical and material R&D, from quantum to AI,” said Dr. Arturo Robertazzi, Chief Growth Officer and Co-Founder at Quantistry. “With a focus on sustainability and renewable energies, this partnership propels our goal of enabling leaders in strategic industrial sectors to foster a greener future for all.”
The Bloch Quantum Tech Hub awarded $500,000 by Economic Development Administration
The Bloch Quantum Tech Hub was awarded a $500,000 Consortium Accelerator Award through the US Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) to continue implementing a strategy focused on accelerating the industry adoption of quantum technologies. The award will be used to strengthen the consortium and attract additional capital as per the July 30 news release.
The Bloch is a Chicago Quantum Exchange-led coalition of Fortune 500 companies, quantum startups, world-leading universities, state and city governments, community colleges, and economic and workforce development nonprofits. It is the nation’s only quantum innovation team rallying entire sectors around society’s most urgent challenges — to combat financial fraud, secure the energy grid, and accelerate the development of life-saving drugs.
Accenture and SandboxAQ expand partnership to help organizations strengthen data encryption today and protect against future threat
Accenture (NYSE: ACN) and SandboxAQ are expanding their partnership to address the critical need for enterprise data 
encryption that can defend against current data breaches, as well as future AI and quantum threats as per a news announcement July 30. Together, Accenture and SandboxAQ are helping organizations secure sensitive data and strengthen encryption across their technology portfolios. The joint offering will also provide observability across environments to help increase enterprise resilience and lower impact from third party risks.
More than half (52%) of CEOs consider the accelerated pace of technology innovation a top risk for cyberattacks, with 86% rating cyber trust and resilience in emerging technologies like generative AI and quantum computing as highly relevant for their organizations, according to research from Accenture.
As part of an ongoing commitment to cryptographic excellence. As part of an ongoing commitment to cryptographic excellence, Accenture is introducing a new Encryption Risk Assessment service, integrated with SandboxAQ’s AQtive Guard.
The service can identify risks across important areas including the existence of cryptographic assets such as digital certificates or cryptographic keys, and usage of cryptographic algorithms, both symmetric and public key, as well as any other cryptographic constructions such as hash functions, for a comprehensive view of cryptography use throughout the enterprise. When combined with data security and privacy policies along with governance, risk and compliance guidelines, the assessment delivers prioritized recommendations for remediation action, enabling businesses to act with urgency and agility to protect their overall infrastructure against the most advanced and sophisticated threats, and in their transition to post-quantum technology.
In Other News:
Engineering.com reports: Quantum computing is already impacting engineering simulation
Erin Winisk Anthony reports how quantum computing could impact engineering applications from simulation to digital twins in her July 29 article in Engineering.com
The automotive and aerospace industries are looking to use quantum computing for simulation, materials development, battery research, route optimization and more.
As companies ranging from IBM to Google work to develop more capable quantum computers, the industries poised to use them are paying keen attention. Director of quantum algorithm engineering at Nvidia, Elica Kyoseva, told Engineering.com that many organizations are already investing in seeing how greater scale quantum computers could fit into their engineering workflows.
Digital twins are another engineering application that could receive a quantum boost. The computing paradigm could enable more detail and complexity in these virtual systems. Nvidia is even working on creating digital twins of quantum computers themselves to advance the technology.
Despite there being some big new problems that quantum can conquer, the average engineer likely won’t have to change their day-to-day workflows.
Software should automatically take care of routing computing tasks to the right chip, classical or quantum. Engineers wouldn’t need to be trained in how the chips process the information. They would just see the results.
