Tech Outlook: Jake Douglass, Sandia National Laboratories
Jake Douglass, a Sandia National Laboratories technical business development specialist, is the guest on this week’s Tech Outlook podcast, which will be released Monday afternoon.
Douglass talked about the labs’ quantum program, and a new partnership between the labs and the University of New Mexico to create the Quantum New Mexico Institute.
Albuquerque has long been a leader in quantum technology, Douglass said, and one of the goals of the institute is to harness that expertise within the state’s universities and national laboratories and commercialize it to create more economic opportunities in the area.
Jake, to start, can you tell us a little about yourself and what a business development specialist at Sandia does?
“Thanks for having me today. So, business development specialists at Sandia help bridge the gap between our technical goals and then our long-term, forward-looking strategic plans, partnerships, workforce development, things of that nature.
A little background on myself, I was born and raised in Roswell, New Mexico, I went to school in New Mexico Tech, got my degree in chemistry, I went back to (New Mexico Highlands University) and got my (master’s of business administration), and then jumped in at Sandia about six years ago now, where I’ve been working with a quantum program for pretty much that entire time.”
Can you explain what quantum technology is?
“So essentially, quantum technologies are taking advantage of quantum physics to do new types of things and computation sensing and communications. So it’ll give us a whole new tool set to do modeling, or quantum sensing will give us some capabilities and GPS denied navigation, things like that.”
Can you tell us about the history of this institute?
“So about two years ago, Sandia and UNM started thinking about ways where we could really capitalize on the deep history that we have in quantum. In 2018, the National Quantum Initiative was passed to really create an all-of-government approach for the U.S. to advance quantum technologies, because it has really interesting and potentially transformative, national and economic security impacts.
“And so when we started talking, we wanted to really stand up New Mexico as a key player across the globe. Because we were foundational in the field, UNM started doing this 30 years ago, Sandia and Los Alamos National labs got into it 20 years ago. And we’ve made a lot of the breakthroughs to get to the point today where we’re starting to see some of the impacts of the technologies coming to market.”
Earlier we were talking about how quantum science has been around for a long time, but in recent years there has been some significant breakthroughs.
“It’s been around for about 100 years, when people started playing around with quantum physics and how weird they are. In the past 10, 5 to 10 years, real breakthroughs have been coming through in engineering and our understanding of how these systems work. So we’re starting to see a lot of startup companies come out. There are a few public ones now like Quantinium and IonQ. And they’re starting to do interesting things with them. It’s still about 10 years out before we think quantum computers are going to be able to do really great, impactful things. But we’re starting to play with it now and really understand the potential transformative nature of it.”
You mentioned a 2018 law, in recent years, has a lot of federal money been pumped into advancing quantum technology?
“So in 2018, the federal government passed the National Quantum Initiative, which helped create that allof-government approach to advancing these technologies. So places like the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), they all got a large amount of appropriated funds, over a billion dollars, to go through and try to advance these technologies for the good of the country. Sandia National labs helps co-lead one of the DOD (Department of Defense) flagship centers, their Quantum Systems Accelerator. UNM is a key partner in that we have some other regional partners. So New Mexico, and our region, is playing pretty large roles in the overall context of the National Quantum Initiative.”
From a national security perspective, why does the country want to invest in quantum technology and be a global leader?
“So overall, it’s just gonna give us these new, cool tools to do things that matter across the national security complex. The most interesting one, though, is around cryptography. So with a sufficiently large and sophisticated quantum computer, we think that we’ll be able to go and break a lot of different methods of cryptography, which could be very worrying if the information that we’re protecting through cryptographic methods is then compromised. So keeping our national security secret safe, keeping our bank transaction safe, things like that.
And what essentially is cryptography?
“It’s the way we protect our data electronically.”
So better quantum technology would create more security for those sensitive transactions and data?
“Yeah, and it’s across the board. So our health care system, finance, everything, we use cryptography to protect that data now. And that’s how we can keep our information safe. So that’s a big worry.”
How would you compare or rate how Albuqurque stands in the world of quantum technology?
“So this is a field where we’re truly world leaders. And we’re kind of at that inflection point where we need to organize if we want to continue being leaders. And that’s one of the driving forces behind setting up this institute . ...
“It’s to really spur the economic development piece. Because New Mexico and Albuquerque have incredibly strong academic and national lab partners. I haven’t talked about the (Air Force Research Lab) yet, but they have a lot in sensing and communications. And they’re going to develop some great capabilities. But we’re missing industry. And so through this proposal ... we’re really hoping we can start drawing industry here, because they want to work with us.”
Can you give us an example of a business that has harnessed quantum technology?
“So that’s kind of one of the tricky things, right? It’s an emerging technology. And we’re still trying to figure out exactly how it works. And so quantum computers haven’t proven that they’re going to be useful yet. There’s a lot of theory, there’s a lot of potential applications that people are very excited about. And that’s why we are seeing a ton of investment to the all-of-government approach.
“But we have seen some interesting hybrid approaches where we use both quantum computing and classical computing in things like finance, where we can go through and improve fraud detection, by using algorithms from both worlds.”
If there’s an emerging quantum economic ecosystem in Albuquerque, you’re going to need some very smart, well-trained people to fill those job positions, right?
“Absolutely. And that’s kind of the model we have now, right? A lot of people are going and getting their Ph.Ds, master’s (degrees). But the most interesting opportunity that I see, from my point of view, is as the systems continue to develop and grow and get commercialized, we’re going to need people thinking about the really hard next steps. But we’re also going to need people who can actually maintain the systems and run the systems. And for those, we think there’s a lot of great opportunities for high-value jobs for technicians.
“We’re working with Central New Mexico Community College and some community colleges in Colorado to actually stand up a hands-on learning lab, where folks can come and get trained on optics and lasers and vacuum systems or things like that. Where they can go and work on these awesome systems and advanced technology but not have to go to school for 10 years.”