Collaborations

Many QSO volunteers have day jobs with Government employers, such as NIST and DIA. Volunteers cannot use their employer’s resources, nor charge labor hours, except when authorized by their respective employer, whether government or industry. All volunteers are encouraged to inform their employers of professional extracurricular activities . To date all Government employees that are also QSO volunteers have had no (zero) issues with volunteering their time. QSO is non-profit, and it is serving the best interests of the quantum professional community, and those who can potentially benefit from quantum technology, such as stakeholders like funding source organizations that are looking to advance quantum technology from lab-to-field.

The major difference between industry and government is in sponsorship opportunities. Industry can contribute at Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze sponsorship levels that are described elsewhere, and government is typically grants and contracts, although this is an option for industry also. Engagements to date have included conferences at IEEE and SPIE, and meeting with the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C). QED-C is significant because of its extensive reach: quantum performers/members from about 37 countries. QSO presents at the NATO Military Sensors Symposiums in April 2023. QSO has also met with quantum providers directly, ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Today there are over 500 quantum performers globally and QSO is routinely cataloging more as they enter the quantum landscape.

There is continually an expanding need in intelligence to collect data in forms which will allow aggregation and reasoning.  More specifically to create interoperability of data repositories and data resources.  Ontology development efforts address this need.  Until recently these efforts have been fragmentary. Now, however, we have the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community Ontology Working Group (DIOWG), which has recognized a need for a coordinated effort, with high level (Chief Technology Officer, Chief Information Officer, etc.) spearheading the support. The work described in this paper falls under the auspices of the DIOWG.  

Collaboration with the National Intelligence University (NIU) establishes a basis for rapid advancement in later stages of the students’ careers.  This project includes a large edifice of quantum ontology-based labels which provides opportunities for students to familiarize themselves with data curation needed for real world applications.  With an early adoption the students will have the opportunity to contribute to all aspects of quantum metascience including ontology development, ontology evangelization, ontology software applications, and Artificial Intelligence related software.

Students can contribute to the QSO’s quantum metascience initiative (QMI), by supporting data ingest into the knowledge graph, including the quantum sensors pipeline portion. This is essentially a database population of all institutions, subject matter experts, specs, metrics, and intellectual property rights etc. linked together as entities and relations, without the disjointedness of relational tables.  This seemingly daunting task is eased via the automation features provided by the QSO Portal. For example, when the portal (currently in beta) is launched for students use, it will provide the automated drag-and-drop onto Upload portal page, ingest, and parsing of the documents. If a document is not in English, and in one of 75 supported languages, it will be automatically translated and parsed also, as part of the knowledge ingest process. Students’ time will be more intellectual, spending less of it on mundane tasks, such as the raw knowledge ingest from a) quantum knowledge sources and b) prototype/product developers spec sheets, and c) text contained in documents and websites.

Under the guidance of NIU faculty, the students will be able to organize cohort lead research in an environment where they can focus on assessing technical capabilities, performance, use cases, and technical readiness of the respective sensors in the pipeline, including editing and reviewing specs and metrics, assessing, and selecting from the portal page drop-down list of the 9 technical readiness levels.  Furthermore, they will be able to provide additional content to the quantum knowledge base, helping to expedite transfer from lab to deployed real world applications, as quantum technology matures.  With faculty and students’ involvement, and collaboration, their contributions will provide additional curated content, thus added-value, for industry, government  and academia alike.

The National Quantum Initiative Act (NQI Act) was signed into law on 21 December 2018. It directs the President to implement a National Quantum Initiative Program to establish the goals and priorities for a 10-year plan to accelerate the development of quantum information science and technology applications [12].  Since the establishment of NQI there have been three annual reports published on the NQI program, the latest report released on 6th January outlines some important guidelines and achievements in FY22 [13].  The NQI promotes engagements with industry, the academic community, National Laboratories, and Federally Funded Research and Development Centers. 

The third annual report on the NQI program and budget outlines a sustained investment by the establishment of several NQI centers, the Quantum Economic Development Consortium, and new Quantum Information Science (QIS) R&D activities.  The reported actual budget expenditures for Quantum Information Science (QIS) R&D were $449 million in FY 2019, $672 million in FY 2020, and $855 million in FY 2021, and $918 million in FY22 [13].  The requested budget for FY 2023 is $844 million which highlights the sustainability of the NQI program for the near future.  The focus and future investments made in fundamental QIS research, education, and training across agencies and departments will be crucial on society and ways each organization accomplishes its mission.  The QMI initiative is aligned with NQI to develop an ecosystem that will accelerate the body of knowledge by promoting discovery and exploration through partnerships with academia and industry.

The National Strategy for QIS recommends strengthening the U.S. approach to QIS R&D and to focus on six key areas: science, workforce, industry, infrastructure, security, and international cooperation [13].  Implementing a science-first approach requires strengthening core QIS R&D programs, promoting new QIS centers, and exploring quantum frontiers.  The QMI initiative is relevant across the agencies, departments and QIS centers in many regards, especially the sharing of information via the ontology-based knowledge graph. QMI members engage on important issues within the QIS community, and the QMI Portal (currently in beta) is expected to make engagement easier, and improve the efficiency, effectiveness and speed of information synthesis and dissemination, thus improving the speed of quantum innovation. AI machine learning applied to the QSO ontology-based knowledge graph, described above, should help accelerate discoveries and progress. It is too early to know the full extent of AI machine learning on this, but evidence suggests that it will be very significant based on remarkable advances in AI machine learning in recent years.

QSO’s Quantum Metascience Initiative (QMI), in coordination with the National Intelligence University, will be co-hosting a “Quantum Metascience” engagement at the university in spring 2023.  The QMI and NIU will be joined by professors, staff, and experts in S&T intelligence education, diversity, equity, and inclusion for a series of brown bags and guest lectures aimed at exploring specific actions needed to ensure progress in quantum education as it relates to national security.

QMI researchers will be engaging with NATO to discuss joint interests and collaboration opportunities in quantum science, engineering and QIS at the 10th Military Sensing Symposium in April 2023.  In addition to identifying several QIS areas of mutual interest, it is anticipated that QMI symposium attendees will hold a series of discussions on QIS use cases with the goal of furthering this collaboration and identifying quantum technology solutions to existing real-world problems.