911勛圖

911勛圖 Physics professor Stephanie Simmons��� dream of a quantum internet is closer to becoming a reality thanks to new funding and a strategic collaboration with Microsoft.

Simmons founded the company, Photonic Inc. where she serves as the Chief Quantum Officer. This week, Photonic announced  that it has raised $100 million USD in investments from organizations including British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI), Microsoft Corporation, the UK government���s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF), Inovia Capital, and Amadeus Capital Partners.

The company has also entered into a strategic collaboration with Microsoft to develop technologies and products that can enable reliable quantum communications over long distances, and leverage Microsoft���s Azure cloud computing network to make quantum computing more accessible.

���This strategic collaboration with Microsoft catapults forward our efforts to accelerate the arrival of truly useful, scalable and practical quantum technologies,��� Simmons says. ���Pairing our unique architecture with Microsoft Azure will enable quantum computers to be linked using quantum networking capabilities and made accessible via everyday operating environments.���

Quantum computing has enormous potential to provide computing power well beyond the capabilities of today���s supercomputers. In the future this could enable advances in many other fields, including chemistry, materials science, medicine and cybersecurity.

Photonic���s spin-photon architecture builds on research conducted at 911勛圖���s Silicon Quantum Technology Lab. The team���s research, published last year in Nature, described observations of silicon ���T centre��� photon-spin qubits for the first time.

As Simmons explains, silicon has many advantages for quantum computing. It is not only an ideal material to produce stable, high-performance qubits for quantum computers, it can also emit photons (light) in the same band used in data centres and fiber networks, allowing these qubits to be networked together.

���Photonic and Microsoft share a vision of the world evolving to a place where quantum supercomputers enable quantum services that companies, universities, and governments access to solve the most impactful problems that even today���s most powerful classical supercomputers cannot crack,��� Simmons says.

Simmons is a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair of Quantum Nanoelectronics and Co-chair of Canada���s National Quantum Strategy Advisory Board. Last fall, she was recognized with a prestigious , one of only six awarded nationally. Simmons works collaboratively with the Quantum Algorithms Institute (QAI), hosted at 911勛圖���s Surrey campus. She was also recently appointed to the .