From Idea to Intellectual Property – Season 2 Episode 4: A Quantum computer in your pocket?

Now our phones are so sleek, slender and small, you forget how much computing power fits into our back pockets.

Well, quantum computing promises another huge leap in our tech capacity, so much so that futurists are calling it the next horizon.

And for future players, and Australia is up there in the leading pack at this stage, this is as big as the space race.

And quantum computing is not just for the physicist and the Googles of the world, it’s going to impact you.

Hello, I’m Lisa Leong, and this is season two of From Idea to Intellectual Property.

Dr.

Simone Shu-Yen Lee is a senior associate and patent attorney at Griffith Hack, and as a patent attorney, she’s been tracking the trends, who is filing, what, and where.

Simone says there are three ways in which quantum computing will change your life.

We’ll get to them in a tick, but first, I’ve given Simone a challenge to explain what quantum computing is in two minutes.

Okay, Simone, your time starts now.

Okay, well, normal computers, so a classical computer, you know, one that we use all the time, it uses these things called bits.

A bit is the smallest amount of information you can have.

It has two values, it has a zero and one.

So you’ve ever seen machine code, it’s just a bunch of zeros and ones.

And you get groups of them, and they represent light bits of information.

A or B, for example, and then they add together to make words.

So that is classical.

Quantum computing arises out of quantum physics, which was discovered in the 1960s and the 70s.

And what scientists found is that, when you look at atomic systems and subatomic systems, things don’t act the way that classical systems work.

They exhibit weird phenomenon called things like quantum interference, quantum superposition, and other phenomenon.

But now that quantum bit, that smallest piece of information is actually represented by possibly a single atom, which is like the tiniest units that we can really manipulate.

And instead of being a zero and one value, a qubit can now take a number of values, so it can be any value that is the addition of a zero and one value, so it can take a range of values.

So that makes a qubit work in a completely different way to a classical bit, and also have all these abilities that it didn’t have before.

And that’s one of the exciting things about quantum computers, because potentially, they could be really small, because we’re talking about the smallest atoms, right?

You know, just a few atoms held together as a quantum computer could potentially be, you know, something in your pocket once we know how to manipulate it and reduce the noise.

So that’s really exciting too, you know.

How far away are we from having a quantum computer in our pocket?

Pretty far, pretty far.

They were pretty much like briefcase size for the even smallest one.

Well, I have really big pockets though, so maybe…

You’re the lucky one.

I’ve got tiny pockets.

Well, hopefully soon.

I don’t know, but we’re looking decades away.

We wanted to look at the three ways in particular that quantum computing will change our lives as people on the street.

So let’s go with number one.

What’s one way which will blow our minds about quantum computing and what it can do?

The first way will probably be the possibility of new drugs, because if we look at quantum computers, they’ll be so powerful potentially that we can use this to really work out a lot of numerical modeling to discover new drugs and how they interact with other molecules or our receptors.

So the drugs come into our body and then they interact with our receptors.

And they posit, so the experts think that we could design drugs that could target those receptors really accurately.

So we could have really amazing drugs without having to test physically in clinical trials whether this one works or that one works.

We’d be able to look at thousands of possibilities and see which ones are the most promising.

Is it something like the COVID vaccine, which obviously took time in order for it to get it to a state where it could be rolled out?

Are you saying that it could actually shorten something like that?

Potentially, yeah, absolutely.

So any numerical type of modelling that you’d have to do for any drugs, you could at least try out first, model it in a computer and see whether it’s got any legs and choose the most viable looking options rather than having to try this person takes it, that person takes it, clinical trials.

They take years and years.

So you could be accelerating scientific discoveries by decades.

Okay, let’s go to number two, weather forecasting and climate modelling.

Yeah, that’s very exciting too.

That’s part of the chemical and biological modelling that I talked about.

We can really use all that computational power to do lots of machine learning algorithms that can potentially predict the weather, which is one of the most complex systems that we can really try and solve at the moment.

Imagine long range forecasting that was really accurate.

Are we going to have La Nina, El Nino?

What if we could predict where cyclones are going to land way before they do?

That could potentially save lots of lives.

It could save crops and infrastructure.

So potentially a lot of gain from that.

And number three, sensors.

Sensors.

Because quantum computers are so tiny, you have to be able to put the information in and to read the information out.

And you have to use lasers and other ways of measuring it, microwaves to manipulate and read this information in and out.

And because of that accuracy, we’ve developed some amazing technology to do this in a less noisy way and error-free way.

And this basically has meant that we’ve increased our sensing capabilities, and this can only fully develop as we keep developing quantum computing.

So we could be having better sensors for military applications, communications.

One of the things that’s probably be very useful for Australia is that we might be able to sense geological deposits more easily.

We could look for oil or minerals, diamonds, perhaps.

That could have implications for how we use the geological deposits in Australia.

So that could be a way that Australia could benefit from that as well.

So, Simone, there’s obviously some great benefits of having this quantum computing, but like in any story and like in pop culture, where we have a hero, we also have the villain.

So tell us how quantum computing might fall into the hands of the baddies and what might happen.

So you probably, everybody probably knows about cryptocurrency.

So cryptocurrency runs on special registers that are very highly regulated, and you have to use huge amounts of computing power in order to encode information onto this registry and to take it off again.

It’s a vast amount of computing power to do this, and it takes up something like 5% of the world’s energy.

So imagine if instead you used a quantum computer to crack cryptocurrency registers, it would disrupt all the cryptocurrency.

And that’s just one example.

It could disrupt the entire finance industry.

Think of your banking, how secure your banking between the app on your phone and the banks, or any retailer, any e-commerce retailer.

You know, that could be all disrupted.

Even our infrastructure, you know, our energy, our utilities, they all have to be kept free from outside influence.

You know, potentially, if you had a quantum computer, you could crack people’s websites and databases.

I don’t think you need a quantum computer to crack my codes, to be honest.

So how do we safeguard ourselves then from these negative parts that may eventuate?

Well, there’s actually been a lot of research already on something called quantum cryptography, and it’s interesting.

It’s another quantum phenomena about how it’s kind of talk about spooky action between two atoms that somehow two particles, even though they’re not touching or don’t seem in contact, can actually influence each other.

And so quantum cryptography posits that if you’re sending information one place to another, if a third party tries to interject in there, it’ll actually change the information and you’ll be able to tell.

So they’ve been working on that for a long time now.

And hopefully if we have quantum computers to improve our quantum cryptography, we could actually make much safer communications.

And Simone, you’re a patent attorney and you’re in this space.

Like it’s kind of mind blowing, isn’t it, this space?

It is, it is.

So we’re seeing a lot of new patent applications coming out of this field on some amazing technology to the point where we’ve actually, there’s a classification system for the different technologies in the world that come out from patents.

When new technology arises, they develop new classifications for it.

And in 2019, what they call the International Patent Classification introduced a new classification just for quantum computing, which kind of highlights that we’re already getting some patent applications in that area and they wanted to classify it.

So once we saw that and there were more classifications in just last year, you know that there are much more patents being filed in this area.

So you can see, wow, yes, there’s development, there’s research, and now they think that there’s commercialization in it as well.

So hot right now.

So what are the trends that you’re picking up on, Simone?

Ooh, trends.

Trends, I would say, materials for quantum computing.

So they’re trying to work out all the hardware right now.

So that’s some really amazing stuff.

And Australia’s really at the forefront.

I mean, I did a PhD in quantum optics and there’s quite a number of quantum optics research groups around the country, quite a few.

And that has actually given rise to a lot of startups.

And I think there’s over 20 quantum computing startups, which is quite a large amount considering how small Australia is.

And so there are all the different materials that we’re looking at.

There’s silicon, there’s diamond, there’s ruby, all sorts of different condensed matter to try and hold the atoms.

So there’s all these different ways that they’re trying to make a quantum computer.

And you’re just wondering which one is going to be the one that wins out.

And it’s just going to be like what we use currently in silicon chips.

And what about trends in terms of who or what company is filing?

So when I looked at the quantum, did a search in these classifications, one of the things I was really interested in is looking at who’s filing large numbers of patent applications, who’s doing the research and development.

And it’s pretty exciting to see that, you know, the traditional computing companies that you know of now are at the forefront, Google, Intel, IBM.

But then there’s these other companies that have also been obviously pouring large numbers of investment capital into quantum computing as well.

Alibaba, Amazon.

You think, well, this is kind of outside there, what we would normally turn to be their normal commercial activities.

And then behind all the big international companies, you’ve got these smaller startups that’s on the basis of these new materials that I’ve been talking about, you know, the Ruby and Diamond and condensed matter.

And you think, well, if they hit the jackpot, they work out the right materials and they’ve got the patents in this area, then they could take over the world, essentially.

And I think that’s what everybody is looking for.

You said Australia is developing a lot of tech in this space.

How did we position ourselves so well for this and how might we better support this kind of innovation into our future?

I think it’s because Australia’s just invested very heavily with centers of development and just sponsoring a lot of PhDs and other research groups.

There’s quantum optics groups all over the country for the last 20, 30 years.

And that’s just built up a wealth of information of people who are very, very skilled in this area.

And that’s really led to all these different startups.

And I think the Australian government’s done pretty well.

They’ve got all these centers of excellence.

There’s one at University of Sydney and very similar ones around the country that are focused on quantum optics.

And then as the technology changed, more of the quantum technologies that will give rise to a quantum computer.

So that’s really helped.

And I think they’re building a roadmap for quantum technologies because they really anticipate that this is going to be a huge industry.

I think there’s been predictions, there’s billions of dollars worth of infrastructure, of support, somebody’s going to have to supply all these companies with the nanomaterials, with cooling or manufacturing.

So this could hopefully put Australia in a really good position for a fantastic quantum industry in the future.

And then in terms of people skilling themselves up, so rather than just sort of seeing it as a consumer of quantum computing, how might individuals position themselves for a flourishing quantum industry, as you put it?

If you want to be in IT, I guess there’s actually now educational qualifications that you can get in quantum technologies.

I think there’s one at QUT now, and they’ve got a short course at University of Melbourne, so maybe educating yourself.

But if you’re an IT developer and you want to learn about the future, there’s actually quantum computers that you can register for and attempt some time on a quantum computer, and you can develop your own algorithms.

And I think that would probably put you in the ground level for the IT of the future, because we’re going to need people who can develop for a quantum computer, write code for a quantum computer, and that will be where things will really take off for people beyond just scientists who are developing this technology.

Have you had a crack?

Have you had a go?

Gosh, I wish I had the time.

I think it’s beyond me.

That’s true.

But also it’s very sophisticated technologies.

There’s actually a quantum computer on the space station.

So if anybody wants to interact with that one, you can actually apply for that too.

That’s just blow my mind.

Thank you so much, Simone.

You’re very welcome.

That was Dr.

Simone Shu-Yen Lee, Senior Associate and Patent Attorney at Griffith Hack.

Thanks to our producer, Kara Jensen McKinnon.

This podcast is brought to you by IPH, helping you turn your big ideas into big business.

I’m your host, Lisa Leong.

Bye for now.