In October 2021 six Dutch academic and research organizations signed a memorandum of understanding to establish the Quantum Application Lab (QAL): University of Amsterdam (UvA), the Netherlands Organization for applied scientific research (TNO), the national research institute for mathematics and computer science (CWI), the Dutch collaborative ICT organization for Dutch higher education and research (SURF), TU Delft (on behalf of QuTech and Quantum Inspire) and the Netherlands eScience Center.
QAL will fulfill the much-needed connection between scientific developments of quantum hardware and software and demand-driven solutions for e.g. optimization, simulation, and machine learning. Embedded in the Quantum Delta NL (QDNL) ecosystem, QAL will accelerate the construction of a social and economic innovation infrastructure for quantum computing and the knowledge, capabilities, and competencies required for this. QAL will do this by identifying promising domains for quantum computing applications and executing projects together with scientific, industrial, and/or private sector partners.
The QAL partners are developing a public-private partnership (PPP) that will bridge the gap between academic research and industrial applications of quantum computing to solve some of our most pressing societal challenges in the area of health care, energy, technology and security.
As a national, open innovation and trans-disciplinary collaboration between public and private organizations, QAL will provide for all necessary conditions and infrastructure that lead to quantum computing application development. QAL covers the whole chain from problem identification and dissection into different (mathematical) parts, to implementation of existing classical solutions and development of novel quantum algorithms, benchmarking and optimization based on multiple quantum computing architectures, and intimate knowledge of the needs of potential users.
