July 27, 2023 — Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $11.7 million in funding for six collaborative projects intended to improve understanding of whether, when, and how quantum computing might advance the frontiers of computational science, the agency said.
Total funding is $12 million for projects lasting up to four years in duration, with $4.8 million in Fiscal Year 2023 dollars and outyear funding contingent on congressional appropriations. The list of projects and more information can be found on the ASCR program website. Award recipients can be found here.
“Quantum computing is a rapidly advancing technology that may one day push the boundaries of computational science beyond what we can achieve with exascale machines like Frontier,” said Ceren Susut, Acting Associate Director for Advanced Scientific Computing Research. “Today’s supercomputers allow us to explore scientific problems in ways we haven’t been able to in the past – modeling dangerous or costly experiments, accelerating clean energy options, and mitigating the impacts of climate change. It’s imperative that we understand what quantum computers are capable of so we can build future generations of supercomputers.”
Projects explore the limitations of the noisy, intermediate-scale quantum processors available today and aim to develop tools for assessing whether a particular quantum processor may be able to advance the frontiers of computational science even in the absence of formal error correction on the device.
The projects were selected by competitive peer review under the DOE Funding Opportunity Announcement “Quantum Testbed Pathfinder.”