• The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in India will establish a Quantum Computing Applications Lab in the country, in collaboration with AWS, to accelerate quantum computing-led research and development and enable new scientific discoveries.

    • The MeitY Quantum Computing Applications Lab will provide quantum computing as a service to government ministries and departments, researchers, scientists, academia, and developers, to enable advances in areas such as manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, and aerospace engineering.

    • AWS will provide hosting with technical and programmatic support for the Lab.

    • This MeitY initiative will provide scientific, academic, and developer communities access to a quantum computing development environment aligned with the government’s science and technology priorities.

    • Quantum computing is an emerging field that harnesses the laws of quantum mechanics to build powerful tools to process information.

    • It has the potential to solve computational problems that are beyond the reach of classical computers, and lead to new breakthroughs that can transform chemical engineering, material science, drug discovery, financial portfolio optimization, machine learning, and much more.

    • Such a lap once established with the support of AWS, is going to be the first of its kind initiative in the world, and aims to enable India’s talented researchers to explore the unchartered applications of quantum computing, and pave the way for new discoveries and disruptions.

    • The MeitY Quantum Computing Applications Lab will identify quantum computing problem statements for experimentation from among Central and State Governments, Research Institutions, and Academia.

    • The Lab will then provide select applicants with access to quantum computing hardware, simulators, and programming tools, on-demand and at no cost, via Amazon Braket, that enables scientists and developers to build algorithms, conduct advanced simulations, and run experiments.

    • Amazon Braket provides a development environment to enable users to explore and design quantum algorithms, test and troubleshoot them on simulated quantum computers, and run them on different quantum hardware technologies.

    • The MeitY Quantum Computing Applications Lab will help government bodies and the scientific community to identify problems and opportunities rapidly, and test real-world challenges through experiments and prototypes in a low risk environment. 

    • Outcomes from these experiments will help researchers evolve the problem statements, proof-of-concepts, and prototypes that will lead to the development of new applications, models, and frameworks in quantum computing.

(The author is a trainer for Civil Services aspirants. The views expressed here are personal.)