MeitY in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to set up Quantum Computing Applications Lab

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) will establish a Quantum Computing Applications Lab in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the country to accelerate quantum computing-led research and development and enable new scientific discoveries. On its part, AWS will provide hosting with technical and programmatic support for the Lab.

The said lab will provide quantum computing as a service to government ministries and departments, researchers, scientists, academia, and developers to enable advances in areas such as manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, and aerospace engineering.

This initiative will provide scientific, academic, and developer communities access to a quantum computing development environment aligned with the government's science and technology priorities.

Quantum computing is an emerging field that harnesses the laws of quantum mechanics to build powerful tools to process information. It has the potential to solve computational problems that are beyond the reach of classical computers, and lead to new breakthroughs that can transform chemical engineering, material science, drug discovery, financial portfolio optimisation, machine learning, and much more.

MeitY Secretary Ajay Prakash Sawhney said that quantum computing is at a very nascent stage in the country and that it is important to make access to quantum computing available for researchers, young companies as well as small and medium businesses.

"This not only enables them to taste what quantum computing could do to their various kinds of use cases and applications, but to actually build solutions around that...making this kind of a lab available at this stage gives us a good start with the infrastructure not just being available, but also accessible in a very simplified way," he said.

The MeitY Quantum Computing Applications Lab, established with the support of AWS, is the first of its kind initiative in the world, MeitY Additional Secretary Rajendra Kumar said.