The roadmap urges Europe to position itself as the world’s first ‘Quantum Valley’, and to that end quantum experts have met with policymakers and representatives at the European Commission to present its latest strategic Research and Industry Agenda SRIA 2030: Roadmap and Quantum Ambitions over this Decade.
Europe is certainly investing in and building an autonomous ecosystem for scientific and industrial applications in the quantum space, and there are thousands of researchers, a thriving workforce and significant amounts of public funding going into quantum technologies.
Europe is increasingly focused on driving much greater economic and technological sovereignty, and there have been growing calls to strengthen the EU’s role as a global player in this transformative field.
The roadmap seeks to position the European Union with its innovation hubs, research centres, startups, ready workforce, and multi-billion Euro investments as the quantum equivalent to Silicon Valley – or the world’s first ‘quantum valley’.
Quantum technologies are an emerging global strategic domain and one which will have immense potential and this new agenda which puts research efforts establishing new links between academia and industry at its heart will play an essential part in delivering that ambition.
Set to be coordinated by the French Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission (CEA) within the European Coordination and Support Action ‘QUCATS’, the roadmap will merge numerous quantum agendas from research, industrialisation, computing, and communication, which co-exist today into a single coherent strategy.
The hope has to be that this will allow the European Commission to optimise all quantum investments in the future, improving the performance and maturity of quantum technologies by 2030.
Plans are afoot to bolster Europe’s quantum workforce by broadening and strengthening the quantum community and there is an acceptance that the sector needs to embrace other industrial and academic sectors looking to integrate quantum technologies into their products and services.
High-performance computing (HPC) is poised to harness quantum hardware as a powerful accelerator within its infrastructures, while the communications industry is also gearing up to enhance the security and capabilities of future networks by leveraging quantum technologies.
In addition, the semiconductor industry is integrating quantum technologies into its roadmap to address the needs of pilot and production lines dedicated to quantum chips, as well as the enabling technologies, such as classical chips for quantum.
The EU’s Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) stresses the need to continue building joint efforts and financial support at the supranational level beyond individual EU Member States’ capabilities and many countries are already channelling substantial resources via national quantum initiatives.
While collective investment in these endeavours now exceeds €5.7 billion over the past five years, integrating and aligning these initiatives within a more coherent strategy will be critical if the EU is to indeed become the world’s first ‘Quantum Valley’.
