In an interview published last week in La Vanguardia, Lluis Torner, director of ICFO-The Institute of Photonic Sciences, explained the potential impact of quantum technologies on industry, the economy and daily life. Torner is the only member from Spain of the high-level expert group for the Quantum Technology Flagship set-up by the European Commission.
Established by the European Commission last August, this high level steering committee has a mandate of one year to provide recommendation on the preparation of a new Quantum Technology Flagship. Its members represent collectively the diversity of stakeholders in Europe, both from the academic as well as the industrial sides.
The group will work together with the wider community of stakeholders from academia and industry and in close collaboration with Member States. It will propose a strategic research agenda with clear and ambitious goals, as well as an efficient approach to its implementation and governance.
The group is composed of the following academic members:
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Mlynek (Chair), Humboldt University
Prof. Dr. Rainer Blatt, University of Innsbruck
Prof. Dr. Vladimir Bužek, Slovak Academy of Sciences
Prof. Dr. Tommaso Calarco, University of Ulm
Prof. Per Delsing, Chalmers University of Technology
Prof. Elisabeth Giacobino, CNRS, Laboratoire Kastler-Brossel
Prof. Dr hab. Marek Kuś, Polish Academy of Sciences – Center for Theoretical Physics
Prof. Eugene Simon Polzik, Niels Bohr Institute
Dr. Maria Luisa Rastello, National Institute of Metrological Research (INRIM)
Prof. Dr. ir. Wim Van Saarloos, The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research NWO – Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter
Prof. Dr. Lluis Torner, ICFO – The Institute of Photonic Sciences
Prof. Ian Walmsley, University of Oxford – Department of Physics
A first meeting of the group was held on September in Brussels. In parallel, the Commission is working on extending the group to representatives of industry.
As ICFO’s director explained in the interview, quantum technologies will facilitate the design of new devices with fundamentally superior performance and capabilities for communication, metrology, sensing, simulation and computing. According to Lluís Torner, some developments will take a long time to produce results that can be transferred to new products and services, but others, in fields like communications and sensing, could be available in as little as five years and produce a great impact on people’s daily lives.
The Quantum Technology Flagship has been established to improve European competitiveness in this area. It has great relevance in the research developed not only by ICFO but also by other BIST centers such as ICIQ, ICN2 and IFAE.
More information at Quantum ICFO website