 Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Bethany Hill McCarthy from IBM Research Communications, and I'm going to serve as your host today. We're looking forward to a lively discussion about how we're going to build a quantum workforce. And we'll talk about where quantum education comes from, what type of education or training is required, and what educators, companies, and even students can do to prepare for this shift, especially with the rise of digital learning. Before we get started, I want to take a minute, run through a couple of housekeeping items for today's discussion. First, thank you for joining us. I want to acknowledge this is a brand new virtual format for us, which we established in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. And we hope each of you are safe and healthy wherever you are. Second, there is a second highlight in the top left corner of your screen. One is a blog post that describes IBM Quantum's education initiatives. The others are quantum education web pages for both educators and students. So feel free to take a look at those during the presentation or after. And we'll also share those links after the session. Throughout the event, you'll have the ability to submit questions for either all the panelists or a specific one if you want to just learn more about a particular topic. You should see a little Q&A window in your screen, and that's where you can submit your questions. We'll try to save about the last 10 minutes for questions, and we'll try to get through as many as we can. In the off chance, we don't get through all the questions. We'll keep a track of those, and the IBM representative you've been reaching out to will contact you and try to get some time scheduled with one of the panelists afterwards. We'll also, on the next day, have a replay of the event available. So following this discussion, we'll share that link with you and all the other event resources. And with that, I want to turn it over to today's moderator, Jeffrey Hammond, who's vice president, principal analyst serving CIO professionals at Forrester Research. Jeffrey, the floor is yours. Thanks a lot, Bethany. This is the second one of these sessions that I've been able to do, and it seems like every time I have one of these, I'm kind of talking to rocket scientists and really smart people, and that's the case again. I write for CIOs and application development leaders, and I've been in the development space for about 30 years. And like many of my clients, I'm trying to put quantum into context. How big is this going to be? How much of a change are we going to have to make in order to take advantage of what's happening here? One of the aspects of quantum, though, is also where are the people that are going to know how to take advantage of this technology and produce this technology going to come from? And I think that that's one of the things that we're going to get the opportunity to focus on today. We've got some really great folks to help us work through some of those issues. So I'd like to start out by introducing Abe, Tina, and Javad really quickly. And I wonder if you could just take a minute or two and tell us about yourself and how you are engaging with the community of technology professionals in the quantum space. Abe? Sure, thank you, Jeffrey. So my name is Abe Asfaw, and I lead a quantum education team at IBM. And really the goal of all of our efforts is to make sure that we can answer the question that Jeffrey asked, which is, how do we build a quantum workforce that is now able to take on the opportunities provided by quantum computing and also contribute to the field? Where are the developers going to come from? Where are the scientists and engineers going to come from? And what materials are they going to use as they learn about quantum computing? And Abe, you're an electrical engineer by trade, right? Working on a PhD right now in that space. Is that correct? Yes, exactly. So I studied electrical engineering in my undergraduate studies and also in graduate school to learn quantum computing. I was actually studying in an electrical engineering department. So something we'll touch on later in the discussion is just how interdisciplinary quantum computing is. And so there's no real home department for quantum computing as it is right now. It stands in many different departments today. Cool. Dr. Brower-Thomas, how about you? Yeah. Yeah, so I'm a materials chemist. So I work on the material side of quantum information science and quantum computing. And as far as where I fit in, working with both in the profession, I've sat on a couple of committees about what is the future of quantum information science education looks like. And we've discussed with industry partners, academia. And I also engage through my research and also my role as education director for the integrated quantum materials with the talent. And they're looking for careers. They're looking for direction. The talent is there. The question is, how do you engage them and keep them involved? Thank you for joining us today. Dr. Shabani. Hi, so this is Shabat. I'm an assistant professor at New York University and we work on quantum computing hardware with interest on the impact and challenges that they provide. This research lab basically is working on how we can make a better one qubit level system and then how they can sort of like transfer maybe to industry for larger systems and how they can be affecting the whole quantum community. But being at the center of the city, we have access to a lot of young resources from high schools to undergrads. City population obviously is engaged with the interest of the students who want to work on this space. And I guess hopefully we will share some of these experiences today. Cool. And you are a physics major by background, right? That is not true actually. I'm a professor at the physics department but my undergrad was electrical engineering and I have a PhD like AAPE in electrical engineering from Princeton. Okay, so two electrical engineers and a chemist and a finance guy. This should be fun. Okay. So if we have a wide range of professions that we're drawing from, why would we have a talent shortage with respect to quantum computing? Tina, let me start with you there because it seems like we've got a couple different areas that folks could come from here and participate in the industry. Yeah, so I think AAPE pointed out rightly so that quantum mechanics, quantum information science, quantum computing, they're all interdisciplinary areas. So yes, we could draw from mathematics, chemistry, physics, electrical engineering. Some could argue civil, mechanical. The question is though, do we really prepare our domestic students to be successful in the field? So in order to work in this industry, in this particular area, you have to have a higher level of education. So we're talking certainly bachelor's degrees. Most of the jobs are there. They're in master's there and people have PhD degrees. So it takes a bit more effort to find yourself in a place where you could make a good living for being in this industry. So the question is, are we preparing K through 12 to be ready to go to the schools that have the requisite curriculum that will then prepare them to be in the industry? And I think the answer unfortunately is no. And that's a long standing problem that we've had in this country, is that we have to do a better job of K through 12, whether it's in quantum and all STEM fields. And so I could go through the statistics of the underrepresented in STEM, whether that be women, blacks, Hispanics, we could do that. But I think the real thing to do is figure out how we can take this opportunity now where when the industry is sort of just opening up and really engage the broadest number and the broadest kinds of folks in the field to get them prepared to have these kinds of jobs to be the workforce that we need in the future. It's interesting, Tina, you almost jog a memory for me all the way back to when I was in third grade and I saw my first trash AD computer. That's how old I am, but I saw it in school and I got the opportunity to kind of play with it and program it. And it really kind of set me down the path that I'm on today. Is there an equivalent in the quantum world that gets this technology into the hands of folks in before they hit university that will expose them to it? I know that you've been doing some stuff around Qiskit and what types of students are participating there? Yeah, so maybe let's take a look at first of all the question about is there even such a thing like the one that you were introduced to that set you on your career path? It's only maybe four years ago, a little over four years ago that quantum computers became available on the cloud. Before then you needed access to a lab in order to work with quantum computers and what that means is you needed to either be doing a master's or a PhD and somehow be participating in the research. But having the quantum computers on the cloud means now a quantum computer is in the hands of pretty much anyone with an internet connection. And that immediately brings the question of how do we get people excited about using these quantum computers, right? There's certainly a lot of interest, but how do we get people excited about learning and using quantum algorithms? So what we're doing in our work is really trying to build materials that get people engaged in many different ways so that they can really start playing with quantum computers and understanding how they work. To answer your question of exactly what are we doing in this direction, we have many initiatives. Pretty much all of them are digital that really try to bring in a large audience into this community. The community is very small and we're trying to bring in more people so that we can upskill them. Now the benefit of having quantum computers on the cloud is that you can turn the challenge of learning quantum computing from sort of a huge barrier to entry where you have to learn quantum mechanics and then you have to learn several things on the way. You can turn the barrier a little bit lower into a question of programming. And that allows you to bring quantum computing far from the graduate level to maybe even at the undergraduate and high school level. And that's exactly the kind of work that we're seeing today and we're supporting in all of our quantum education work. Javad, I think that you're involved in some of that outreach right now. Can you talk a little bit about what you do? I know you were talking about some things just last week when we were setting up this panel. Yeah, so let me actually give a living example of what Abe just said because it connects very well. I had a very motivated undergrad coming to me and said, I wanna do quantum computing. I've read about short algorithm. And how can we do short algorithm? And then you saw, you described that you need a circuit that has Josephson junctions in it. And how do you do Josephson junction? You have to evaporate aluminum. And then how do you do the aluminum? There is an evaporator. And he ended up actually changing the oil on that evaporator for a long time. And then he came and said, this is not quantum computing. And I said that you're absolutely right. But this is a huge field, right? I mean, it has all sorts of legs. Material science, engineering, coding, physics, computer algorithm, right? There is a space for everybody. You may have the tools, you don't know it. But like anything else, we also like to know how impactful things are. So I think with the fact that things are not on cloud, you can do a little bit of actual stuff, the real life hardware that is usually very hard in the lab. And then I say, you know, you learn how hard this thing is. That's the industry. They may hire in that area too. But now you can also go ahead and code a program that does your algorithm. And then if the program in a hardware is not perfect, know where the problem is starting. We go back to the evaporation. We go back to the material science. We go back to all that. So I think that has helped it a lot rather than having like great ideas and then you want to enter and you just, you're dismayed basically, right? So, but I think there's a, yeah. So let me push on something there because it sounds like, you know, traditionally in enterprise computing and software, we kind of separate the hardware folks from the software folks. And like, you know, you look at, for example, MIT, they have 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3. And 6.1 is more the hardware end and 6.3 is more the computer science end. And so it lets these folks kind of go into their own silos. Is that actually doing us a disservice in the quantum world or do we have that same sort of separation between hardware and software? So I think in quantum computing at this stage, I don't know how it was like in 1960s. It is, I don't think if you can separate them, right? If you work with ions, there is a full fundamental understanding of that. And we know that we don't have a perfect quantum computer. To make that little improvement, you need to know the thing inside out, right? It's just not gonna be like, I mean, there are definitely generic algorithms and things that will basically map to everything. But if you don't know the details of how this thing works, in the NISC era, the noisy intermediate regime that we are right now with the errors that we have in the quantum computers, if you want that breakthrough, you have to know the hardware. That's just my personal opinion on this. Yeah. I agree with Jevon on this part. There's a lot that can be learned from hardware. Yeah, and the focus, I think it's important when you talk about where's the talent gonna come from? Someone in K through 12 undergrad, they may not really know exactly what they wanna do. So I think it's really important to give students an opportunity to have research experiences that are varied the way Jevon just described. So if you can go in and understand how the materials work, what is the qubit? And then from there try to understand what is the logic gate that you need in order to go from a classical situation to a quantum situation. I think that's really important because the talent is there. I just wanna keep emphasizing that. The question is how do you engage them? How do you keep them interested? And then people have to see what is the benefit? So we already know that if you get a job in STEM, that you're probably gonna get paid more than if you get a job in some of the other fields that are out there. But we also know that we train people and then we also sometimes lose them, Jeffrey, to the finance industry, right? So we have to make sure that all these things work in tandem. So I think it's important for people to understand it's interdisciplinary. They need opportunities to connect research and education. We need opportunities or we need people to understand that are getting the training. What are the benefits of the training? What is the outcome once you have all this knowledge? Where can you take it? And it needs to be real. If we're gonna engage people who are not typically in the STEM fields or in the quantum fields, they need to understand how it's gonna put money in their pocket. How are they gonna be able to take care of their families as a result of the hard work that they've had to put in to understand all these concepts that we're asking them to understand to be prepared for this type of work. Can I add one thing, sir? Go ahead, go ahead. I'm sorry, just because it relates to Tina. Three years ago I wasn't as experienced and I had this student who came to me and said, I love quantum computing and he was an undergrad. And I gave him all the great things about quantum computing, right? You can do short algorithm, you can do searches. And the IBM was just coming online, right? And so I basically wrote on the hype. I said, you know, this is fantastic script. So he went and then he came back and he said, I wanna switch fields, I wanna go to biology. It's more promising. And there I basically had this long discussion and he basically said, you did, you don't, I wanna be real, I wanna take things seriously. I wanna know the challenges, right? And right now if I factor the number on IBM Q, it gives it like 15, it gives me two by two. I mean, this was a long time ago, right? And it's a wrong, I mean, it's not there, right? But it's just because I think, you know, we all talk about the great things but the great things come with great challenges. And if they don't understand, I mean, they like to understand it. They wanna be taken seriously. So they look at this stuff, which more challenges means more opportunity. And three years ago, I really didn't realize this until it hit me that he came to me and the straight told me that, you know, you're wrong. I mean, if you're right on the hype, there is nothing there. I wonder if there's any junction now. And maybe even to add to this, this idea of inspiring students very early on, maybe even at the K to 12 level. I mean, Tina and I have sat on a panel that tried to lay out effectively what are the key concepts for future learners at the K to 12 level. All of these concepts, even at the national level are trying to make it so that we can teach quantum computing very early on, so that students can be motivated to think about issues in the field very early on. If you show a student at the high school level how to program a quantum computer, they will very quickly run into the problems that are obvious in the hardware. And they can immediately be inspired to think about how to solve those problems, which means they can tailor their undergraduate research experiences to solve those problems. So really bringing quantum computing to students minds as early as possible and introducing it in different ways is a good idea from this perspective as well. Then there's also something that Tina touched on, which is the point about having a pipeline that's leaky at different points for women and people of color. Now, in order to solve that problem, I think the solution is, again, to push things as close to the high school level before we start seeing different parts of our talent pipeline that really bring in different barriers to different kinds of people. All of this is to say it's very important from very different perspectives to bring quantum computing education efforts into the minds of the youngest minds of the future. Let me put a question out there and I'm gonna rephrase it a little bit from one of our listeners. I'll put it in the context of my own son who went to MIT and got a compside degree. And it's funny because in his coursework, they taught him all the ways to build a compiler and all the classical computing theory and everything. And then in his internships, they're all getting paid to write JavaScript and build APIs for Silicon Valley startups. How do you deal with that in the quantum world, the same problem where you've got these folks that are extremely talented and I can't imagine that folks that have cross-disciplinary knowledge and something like material science and an electrical theory are very common. How do you keep them from going to Wall Street or going to Silicon Valley? What's the hook there for them? I can't go on this if it's okay. So in classes that I teach, I had the students from Bloomberg. I had the students from American Express. Maybe it's the nature of the city but I think right now, everybody agrees quantum computing is revolutionary and it's very interesting, right? For fundamental reasons and for the way that it is set up, like everybody practically can contribute to it. Like it's such a vast field. Like you have the communication part of it. You have the security part of it. You can bring all the departments together. It's to me actually, it's the easiest topic if you want to have a multi-disciplinary project defined on it, right? And I think the young students also know this thing. I mean, they kind of know what is exciting and you know what it brings money. And that may be two different things right now, but they know in 10 years, maybe the whole field switches. And I see a lot of young good coders and even like physics background people that basically they say, I get a year gap. I want to do quantum computing now before I go to grad school. I'm not sure. And maybe to add to this, Jeffrey, I think it's important to point out from an industry perspective as you're making these quantum computers, there are concepts that are necessary from an engineering perspective. So electrical engineering, for example, to work with the quantum computers and read out signals from them. There are concepts that are important from a material science perspective. And so there's room for really all kinds of engineers and all kinds of scientists to join the field. What is important is for us to make the story of where they can contribute in the field. And I think that's going back to your question of how do we make sure people don't go off to other fields thinking this isn't a practical field. It's up to us now to explain clearly where people can contribute. But in reality, there is room for anyone to contribute, whether it's developing the quantum systems themselves on the hardware level or developing quantum algorithms for different applications, which really requires sort of a combined effort of many different fields coming together. Let me poke at that a little bit more. So when it comes to... Yeah, go ahead, Tina. I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. I was just gonna say, I think we would benefit a lot from more private public engagement and also academia in the K through 12. If young people actually see the practical side of what they could do with the education, I think that that would give them the onus to go about it. So if they don't know where they can put their energy, they're gonna go with what is out there. And certainly Wall Street is out there. Silicon Valley is out there. But to understand that there are other careers and other directions you could go, I think is important. And to what Abe is saying, yes, it's our responsibility, those of us who are in academia and industry who can see that we need this talent, it's our responsibility to go to them, to go to the talent and let them know what opportunities there are there. I was thinking in my, you know, sometimes I sit around and think, how can we solve some of these problems? So if I had a blank check, I would start a K through 12 program where I would educate young folks about quantum and quantum information science, quantum computing, quantum materials, everything quantum. And just really engage them, give them opportunities to work in industry. And I would invite industry, I would invite PhD candidates to come to these young people and talk to them about what they do every day, what kind of problems they solve. And ask them to help, you know, come together and say, why don't you help me solve this problem? A lot of young people, if you give them direction, they will take it on. They really will take it on. I don't think we've done that enough of that, not just in quantum, but in a lot of the areas that we need to enforce our workforce system. So I think we have real opportunity to come up with some unique ways to solve that problem. But certainly if I don't know that the opportunity's out there, then I'm gonna do what my friends do. I'm gonna, you know, work on Wall Street because I know I get a nice check and I can go to all the restaurants and have my avocado toast or whatever. And I don't have to study anymore. But, you know, so we have to be more engaging, basically. Is there a part of this that relates to what the potential impact of quantum can be? So for example, curing cancer, you know, with quantum computing or facilitating, you know, security and privacy or, you know, perhaps, you know, being able to open up, you know, industry in space, you know, what are the things that fire people's imaginations that quantum can potentially be a part of? Anybody? I can give you an example. I think you- Go ahead, Doran. Yeah, please. Yeah, so one of them that I really like, which is not mainstream, is a weather prediction. So you see there are problems that you can always solve it classically. But if you know the weather tomorrow in a week, it's not that useful. But with quantum computing, you can actually show with another super crazy circuit, you may be able to actually get the answer right when you need it. And that can make a difference. And maybe to add to this in terms of inspiring people, I think one thing to be cautious about is that we generally have to avoid, as Javad mentioned, kind of hyping the field and talking about things where we think quantum computers will be useful, as opposed to the reality of the situation, which is that the quantum computers today have limitations, but we expect them to be able to do this and that. So for me personally, one of the things I find exciting is that quantum computers, quantum systems in general, we're learning how to engineer with them are excellent ways of simulating the behavior of other quantum systems. So the way we understand nature effectively can be enhanced with our ability to engineer and manipulate quantum systems. And we've already seen significant contributions to this, right? So we've seen super sensitive detection of gravitational waves as a result of quantum effects. And there's so many things that we can go through. But at the end of the day, I think we need to keep honest about what the promise of the field is because we risk sort of bringing people in and then immediately giving them kind of the bad news that none of that works right now. So kind of an honest perspective of the field is something that I personally always advocate for. I wanna go back to this issue of interdisciplinary studies because I think it's really important because it seems like often academic organizations and even K through 12 are not necessarily structured that way, you go to math class and then you go to science class or you take compsci and you don't take any chemistry classes because all the compsci things fulfill your requirements. Do we need to start thinking about teaching these subjects differently or when you're teaching quantum concepts, do you have to essentially teach them in an interdisciplinary way? Tina, let me start with you on that. That's a very interesting question. I wanna add something to your question is that it's also in terms of research and to some degree education, it's also an expensive endeavor. And so particularly for research. So I think it's important to, yes, it needs to be interdisciplinary. It's inherently interdisciplinary. I'm not so sure if we wanna tackle teaching math differently. I just, I think we need to tackle what we're teaching in math and what we're emphasizing and how we're letting opening people's minds to what the application is. Teaching linear algebra is essential. We know that for quantum, right? But what is the real application? So because of COVID, I was not able to run my summer school this year as I normally would. So instead I have developed an online community and I invited a professor of electrical engineering to teach a course, a math course that talks about that uses concepts and electricity and magnetisms just to teach specific things about math and vector calculus in particular, right? And so the idea is that a lot of these students have to or have taken electricity and magnetism, but they haven't necessarily seen how what they're learning there could apply to solving and understanding more about quantum mechanics. So taking those opportunities to just make the connections between what they already have to know and how those concepts can be used to understand what they're going to need to know in order to be successful in this field. Of course, there are gonna be some things that I can't predict that they're gonna have to know that's gonna be new, but there's a lot of things that they have to know now that just really need to emphasize the importance of and show real practical ways of how they are applicable to the field. And maybe to add, yeah, I think you've made some very good points, but it all, as Jeffrey was saying, it all comes down to how do you teach something that's so interdisciplinary to so many different audiences, right? That's always a challenge because you have to pick and choose different parts of the field. I think generally we say things like you need to know, so for example, Tina mentioned, you need to know linear algebra. At the end of the day, linear algebra itself is a field where you can get a PhD in. You don't need to know that much linear algebra to get into quantum computing. Really what you need is to learn how to manipulate matrices and maybe do tensor multiplication. And this is all something that is taught at the high school level. In order to know quantum computing, you need to know some quantum mechanics. You can get a PhD in quantum mechanics, that's a traditional path today, but you don't need to know that much quantum mechanics to join the field. All you need is a bit of intuition before you can start really solving problems in quantum computing. So the way to teach it while it's interdisciplinary, the challenge is how to pick and choose different parts of fields that are relevant to it, while also making sure that you're covering the necessary prerequisites for everyone. So a chemist may not have seen, for example, material that a physicist has seen. So how do you make sure that, as you're teaching what you call the core quantum mechanics concepts, that both of them have the same coverage in terms of material. And the fundamental challenge of leading a quantum education team right now is exactly this. So in all of the materials, making sure that we're covering different kinds of backgrounds. No, I agree with Abe. I mean, this is actually a great point. Oh, sorry. No, and actually I want to give credit to Abe for setting up this online book that is so deep and is so vastly developing that depending on if you're an expert or you're just a high schooler, you can still go through the chapters and get a very good idea of how things are developing. But to me, let me just, I guess, point out one thing. We had about 10 high school students in my lab in the last, I want to say, three years. And I think the most motivating part for them to kind of know how much of linear algebra and whatnot you need is basically the talks that they have heard from IBM. Like they basically, they want to know to what extent you need to go, right? And the only way to know that, if you're just an expert giving you an example of that, this is how you need to do. You don't need to do a 10,000 line Qiskit programming. With 20 lines, you can do this. And in that 20 lines, there are five things to learn. And that's how you can kind of develop it. Yeah, we recently had a talk quantum finance talk from Bloomberg that I learned a lot. It wasn't like mathematically very difficult. It was just the way that we don't use to think that way. And I think that sort of this new kind of setups for new thinking would definitely be a motivation and also kind of is a path for the younger kids to join in. I agree. Yeah, I think all these are great points. When I touched on the expense of it, I wanted to sort of think, have us think about how we can use something like distance learning. Because if you don't have the resources to develop the curriculum, or if you're a say K to 12, and you like I believe Abe mentioned, you have your required curriculum things you have to provide. How can we figure out how to use things like distance learning to sort of enrich the things that the requirements that are already out there. And so if, you know, so we're in somewhat in silos. So at some places of saying that in Washington DC, we don't think the K to 12 schools may not have the same resources as maybe a more affluent area in say Boston. But how can we connect teachers together and say, you know, I have the resources to give this extra bit beyond what is required for them to meet, you know, the standardized testing. How can I bring that into your classroom? That should be fairly easy. I don't know why we're not doing more of that. And so I think that is key. If we go back to the idea of where the workforce is gonna come from, it's about, to me it's about shared resources, people not working in silos or being educated in silos. Some people are having experiences, access to higher level thinking about where quantum is going. And some people have no idea that those discussions are even happening. So we have to do better with making sure that everyone has an opportunity to know the things that are going on and where the field is going and what are the new things? What are the old things? What are all the things that we have to, you know, work with in order to be, you know, to really have this workforce that we're talking about? So there are examples of this problem being solved. You know, I think about the Clemson Center for Automotive Research down here near where I live or, you know, things like management and technology degrees or biomedical engineering majors. You know, do we need something like that to, you know, to start to solve the skills gap from a quantum perspective? So maybe I can start here and just give you an example of, as we're talking about the skills gap, just how much relative to the skills gap, just how much interest there is to join the field. So we talk about this skills gap, but also I think what's relevant is what we're offering from a quantum education perspective. So we started, the IBM quantum team started a plan for a summer school this year to teach 200 students, for example, because that's just generally the size of the workforce that we've been looking at. And that summer school quickly grew the interest that we saw from the 200 that we expected to 5,000 people. And that shows you how simultaneously we underestimate the kind of interest in the field and also kind of overestimate the kind of, the gap that there is. With quantum education, I think we can bridge the skills gap that we have, given that there's just so much interest right now. So 5,000 people, almost 5,000 people, are going through daily three-hour lectures for the past seven days now. And they're taking notes with online learning from all corners of the world, from a hundred countries. And this is something that is just unprecedented in the field of quantum computing, right? Something at this scale. So as much as we talk about a skills gap, I think simultaneously we also need to consider there is a lot of interest in joining the field. People are asking the question of what should I learn? What are the prerequisites and how do we as people in the field right now make it easy for someone to join the field instead of setting up barriers of you have to learn quantum mechanics, and then you have to learn this, and then you have to learn that. You have to climb all these walls. Instead, all of the people who are taking this course right now are effectively taking half to a full semester or the quantum algorithms at the university level, packaged into a summer school, which is just fascinating to me to think about. So it shows you, as we're talking about a skills gap that we also have to account for how much interest there is in the field. I agree with Abe. I mean, I mean IBM is doing a phenomenal job to me because maybe I'm closer and I see more, but I think every industry partner and this quantum, they should contribute, they should do more. And because at some point, it becomes like a big data kind of thing. There would be so many resources. Now you cannot pick which one is suited for you. And then you need another skill to kind of do that choosing. But having decentralized, effective packages that are coming out and by the experts in the field, by the people who are actually making the hardware and developing it. And maybe there is equivalent version for irons and others platforms that I'm not aware of. I think the more we have, the better it is. Yep. Let me ask a question from a related field. We also see a lot of folks getting pulled into AI. And I know that one of the jokes for a while was all the physicists that were being produced by a higher education were getting pulled into becoming data scientists because they were used to handling large messy data sets. And that's exactly what was needed in the AI space. But one of the things from an educational standpoint that we're grappling with in that space is the ethics of applying AI. Do we see a similar thing here in the quantum space? Are there ethical concerns that are gonna pop up? And does that become part of the educational curriculum that we put together? And if so, what are they? So ethics to me at least means a couple of different things. One is making sure that our usage of quantum computing, the technology is not for harm, but for good for solving the problems of humanity. That's one aspect to it. And there are different groups of people thinking about this and trying to imagine what a good way to account for quantum computing ethics would be in curriculum development. So that's one side of it. The other side of the, generally, when we talk about quantum computing ethics, what worries me is that as quantum computers developed further and further, I would like to make sure that we maintain open access to the quantum computers for anyone who wants to learn, that we keep the field welcoming and that we don't close off doors for anyone who wants to join the field. Given the scale of impact that we expect from quantum computers, it's a reasonable concern to make sure that we keep access to quantum computers open. And so both of these perspectives are important to me from a quantum computing ethics perspective. And this is something I'm passionate about and we can talk for hours, but I'll let the other panelists also chime in. Yeah. I think- Just to piggyback on what- Go, Hattina. So just to add to what was just said, for me, the idea of diversity in quantum computing is very important because if it's not diverse, if it's not open, then the question could be left to what problems are we solving using the technology? And if there's not representation that's broad, then some problems that need to be solved that impact certain communities may be sort of left out. And I would not like to see that happen. I think that's something that's happened in other industries and I think it's very important that, based upon, as Abe just articulated, it needs to be open because we need to make sure that it's more than fair, I'll put it that way. That's equitable in terms of how we apply the technology that's being developed. I agree with Tina and Abe and I just want to add a quick comment that in quantum computing it's really difficult, I mean it's very challenging. And I think inclusion of everyone with all resources across the globe is to our benefit of the humanity in general. Like we can solve problems, we have never thought we can solve, but we need everybody to do it. So I think an international effort being open about it is totally good, having all sort of, we have to be very inclusive. Also I guess, like any other technology like AI, it will be good uses and bad uses for quantum as well. The very famous one is security, right? You can hack the current network with the quantum computer, you can make a very secure network with entangled photons. So I think there will be always this kind of back and forth, but definitely like any other industry, there will be a solution. I don't think it will be just a bad icon. I really think that point about keeping the access to the technology open resonates in some ways, quantum computers right now feel very much like to me, like mainframes in the very early days where you've got to be very, very well financed to be able to afford to install and run one. You're not going to order it off of Amazon or New Egg anytime in the near future. So if we want to inspire folks to go into these careers, they've got to be available so that they can actually figure the mountain and work against them. So it makes a lot of sense to me. I want to tell the folks out in the audience that we are taking questions as they come in from the audience and many of the questions that I've asked have been from our audience. If you have questions, feel free to ask them. I am going to go into one area that related to one of those questions. And when I think about firing the imagination of folks to come into the space, one of the things I think a lot about from raising children and raising STEM kids was something like First Robotics and the impact that that had at the high school level in terms of creating interdisciplinary teams that were out there programming robots and learning how to do IoT and seeing out how to apply calculus with a PID loop. Do we need something like that for quantum? And if so, what does that end up looking like? I look at a kid that went from the football team to manufacturing with a 3D printer that was not together to now manufacturing rocket nozzles coming out of Penn State. And to me, that's about as interdisciplinary as you can get even at the high school level. Or even if you look at something like Scratch, are there quantum equivalents that we're going to see that are going to drive this technology down into those folks? And if so, what are they? So I think this is for anyone who wants to see exactly what these kinds of things look like. They do exist. We host so many hackathons around the world with this exact reasoning in mind. And the favorite part of my job is seeing people at these hackathons, maybe a group of five, a musician and a physicist and a chemist and a material scientist working together to write code to solve some problem that all of them are thinking about in many different perspectives. We call these Kisket camps and I strongly recommend, I know Javad, you've been to some of these Kisket camps, your students have participated. I strongly recommend for anyone to see the real enthusiasm and excitement about the field to come to one of these hackathons because you'll see just how all of these different groups and backgrounds are coming together to solve problems. And there are also recaps of these hackathons online. So if you look for Kisket camp recaps and I'm happy to point you to specific ones, I think you'd see just the range of projects from coming up with creative ways to teach others to solving physics problems, to contributing to the open source projects in quantum computing or open source code to interact with the quantum computer. So really these things do exist and they're just starting up now. It's fairly early days for quantum computing in that regard. I wanna actually give you an example of something that they can build and Abe actually has seen it in our lab. So last year, the high school students, they actually build a tree ax as Helmholtz coin that acts as a single qubit. So by applying a magnetic field, I wish I was in the lab, I could have brought it out. It was like a 10 inch thing that you actually, you apply magnetic field and it actually can, with Kisket, you can program it to look like an arrow that goes up and down in a single qubit. And now this year, the students are making, I guess they're adding their Raspberry Pi to it. So it becomes like a portable thing that they can take it to their high school and then show it to other kids. But then you have to do the programming of the Raspberry Kid. You have to make a power supply that is cheap enough to do it. You have to make this like all these cores, like properly done. It has become a phenomenal project to me. This is something that you just imagine, how can I visualize a single qubit operation from a point that now you are doing Kisket programming and this block is doing exactly what you wanted to do. So I think those things can become more advanced and it gives a very nice visualization for quantum community. Because we cannot go alone, right? We need other people to join in. I guess what Tina was saying, you need people with the same interest and the hackathons that Abe is talking about are a great resource. If you just go there, you will find 200 friends immediately, right? And that's exactly what we need with quantum. Yeah. And maybe to point out- Don't put them on the same side, I'm sorry. Please go ahead, go ahead, Tina. No, go ahead. No, go ahead. To point out Javad's example of the students building that Helmholtz coil arrangement, you can see just how fundamentally interdisciplinary the field is, even just from that example. So some students are having to think about the quantum mechanics of flipping a qubit and what it takes to flip the qubit and what it takes to apply operations on a quantum bit. And some students are thinking about the programming aspect of it. Other students are thinking about the classical electronics that's needed to drive all of this work. So this is the kind of interdisciplinary effort generally that you need in quantum computing. And so projects like these that are very interdisciplinary that bring in people with different kinds of backgrounds are exactly the kinds of projects that we encourage at these hackathons. So when we think about access- So from a material- And opening up, go ahead. I'm sorry, Tina. I'm sorry. I just wanted to add from a material side. I'm still amazed that we, you know, that I could look at a toning electron microscope image of a two-dimensional material and that at room temperature, I can demonstrate the spin and diamond or some other color center and its relation to a qubit. So the fact that I could do those kinds of things at room temperature and see these properties of say, graphing at room temperature is amazing to me. Now, I think from the material side, you do get more of a fundamental point of view. It's not as, you know, as, you know, I want to say like sexy, excuse me for saying it, but it's not as sexy. Maybe it's like a hackathon. You have to actually go in the lab and, you know, and see, you know, set up this whole system and to get an electron microscope image just a little bit more painful. In that sense, you're not going to have like, you know, a hundred or a thousand people going into lab and looking at a two-dimensional image. But I still think that just knowing, once you explain to someone that something as thin as one atom of material could have such interesting properties, I think you could really, you know, that could be exciting to a lot of people. I have to say the ability to control, you know, matter, you know, at that level, it just does seem kind of cool if you think about it and being able to see it. So when we think about, you know, opening up access and keeping access open as broadly as possible, cloud-hosted quantum computers certainly seem one way to do that. Open source seems another way to do that. Are there countervailing trends that we have to be worried about? So for example, things like export restrictions or proprietary code at this point that are going to be potential challenges that we have to overcome. Just curious where you see the industry right now. I mean, I can review the academic version and I think academically, as Abe mentioned earlier, we are not there and that's the fact. The hardware is very hard. And I think right now our focus should be on solving those problems and having a real quantum computing, you know, and then having a useful thing. And then we can decide, you know, how we want to do it, right? But then we are not there just limiting ourselves. It's just going to take the journey longer and then more painful. That's what I think immediately comes to me. Yeah, and from an industry perspective, I really think there is an opportunity here to learn from many different fields by opening up access to everyone. And that's been very productive. Just working at IBM, I can tell you seeing different clients working together with IBM to come up with different applications has been a very productive way to do things. And I'm a fierce advocate for that kind of thing. At the same time, I will point out the field is also starting to get fairly competitive. We're starting to see many different companies pop up with different interests in the field. So we still have some very interesting things to see about the field going forward. But what I will say is what has been successful so far in the field, which is to maintain open access for everyone so that people can contribute, whether it is by opening up access to the hardware or open sourcing the software, which are both things that we've done. Cool. We've got a couple of minutes left and I want to go ahead and close up. But I'd like to ask each of you if there's one thing that you would like the press and the media to know about the quantum space and think it's very important for them to understand. What is it? Let me start with you, Tina. I think it's important to know that the quantum space is a space, there could be a place for a lot of different people in the quantum space and that we have an opportunity to really invite as broad a participation as necessary to improve our workforce resources, to keep young people engaged and provide a direction in terms of a career and a way to make a life for themselves. I think it's important to understand that although there's a lot of mystery behind quantum science, behind quantum mechanics, it is attainable if we invest now and invest smartly in how we educate people whether that's a K to 12 person who's just starting out in education, getting the fundamentals or whether that's the broader of community so that they could get behind the idea that we need to put and we should put more resources behind quantum education. And also I think ultimately, there's a way to approach the education uniquely and we shouldn't be afraid of that. We should try to meet that challenge. Okay, I appreciate it. Yes, thank you. So I guess adding to Tina and also the relationship with industry, like all the students at the end of the day wanna do something that is exciting and also there is a job after that, right? So the partnership between industry and academia and the development of how industries is growing is gonna basically dictate how many students we're gonna get out and can we get the best of students in this field, right? If industry is doing, you know, making like large escape systems and they are solving great problems, then all the students basically wanna come. If they know that there is no job at the end, they basically just not gonna come and start it. If industry wants the best people to come to IBM and for example, to kind of work on quantum competing. Yeah, so it is basically a hand in hand kind of operation. But I think for that, there is also a medium which is just a community part of it, right? We wanna be honest, we wanna be serious. We know there are serious challenges in the field and more challenges make it more exciting. You know, we see a lot of news articles coming out about this thing and that thing, which I respect them. I know that there is a mentality behind it, but I think at the same time for when you come to education, you wanna only stay with the real stuff. You wanna basically be key to that. You wanna basically be clear where we are, what are the challenges, and that's what the students enjoy the most. You should take them seriously and give them a community. Abe? From a quantum education perspective, so following up with points that both Tina and Javad brought up, we're announcing today opening up the IBM Quantum Educators Program. And the goal of this program is to make sure that anyone as they're teaching a quantum computing course can use our devices. So this gives access to any educator to sign up for time to reserve on the devices so that they can teach during lecture using these systems and also to be able to assign homeworks to students. So we've prepared not only access to the devices, the open access that we talk about, we've also put an open source online textbook on quantum computing that allows students to learn how to program quantum computers as they're going through traditional quantum computing courses. And our goal with all of these efforts is to make sure that as students are learning quantum computing, they're working with the real systems. Just like if you are taking a chemistry course, you would have a lab associated with it. We'd like to make quantum computing something that's tangible, something that students can work with. And so this is our way of making access open for everyone around the world. So I would encourage everyone to look at the IBM Quantum Educators Program, especially now as we're gearing up for the fall 2020 semester. Cool. I wanna thank all of you for being willing to tolerate the questions of a dumb finance guy, but I learned so much whenever we do one of these panels and it's just really great to be able to talk to guys about what you're doing and some of the exciting things that are not too far around the corner. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you. Thank you.