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March 18, 2022

Physicists have worked and wrestled with quantum theory for more than a century now, applying it to explore and help solve the profound mysteries of Albert Einsteins theory of relativity and cosmological conundrums such as black holes, gravity and the origins of the universe.

But for Arizona State University theoretical chemist Vladimiro Mujica, there is still a vast, secret and fascinating world to explore but rather than out there in the vastness of space time, at the nexus between everyday life on Earth and the quantum world. Cellular mutations in the molecule of life, DNA, happen randomly and are governed by quantum probability rules. Download Full Image

Recently, quantum mechanics has been found to play an essential role in our understanding of chemistry and biology, and the molecular theory of evolution.

Now, Mujica will get a chance to further explore this quantum world by leading a three-year, $1 million award from the prestigious Keck Foundation. Their goal is build a foundational understanding of how the sometimes weird, exotic features of quantum physics influence the very stuff that makes life work.

To do so, Mujica will lead a multi-institutional quantum biology team that includes ASU colleague William Petuskey and leading experimentalists, including Northwestern University co-investigators Michael Wasielewski and University of California Los Angeles professors Paul Weiss and Louis Bouchard.

To be successful, we really needed to think outside of the box, with a good foundation, said Mujica, a professor in the School of Molecular Sciences. So, we put this team together of leading experimentalists, but also with a firm grasp of theory top-ranking people to take a quantum leap in this field of science.

The awards initiative, titled Chirality, Spin Coherence, and Entanglement in Quantum Biology,will explore fundamental quantumeffects in biological systems.

For example, two key processes necessary for life: photosynthesis in plants and respiration in animals, are driven by reactions that involve the transfer of electrons in molecules and across boundaries within the cell.

Electrons themselves, in addition to carrying a negative charge, have key quantum properties, including spin, that plays a fundamental role in the molecular electron transfer processes that make life possible.

Vladimiro Mujica. Photo courtesy Mary Zhu

Chiral is the Greek word for hand. No matter how hard one tries, a left hand and right hand are non-superimposable mirror images of each other. Ever try to shake a persons hand with the opposite hand? That awkward encounter simply because the thumbs are in different positions is an everyday demonstration of chirality.

It turns out molecules, and life, have the same chiral properties. But how does that help their biological function?

We're trying to decipher in a way, a mystery of nature and evolution, Mujica said. Because it turns out that biological systems use these chiral molecules in proteins, DNA and RNA. These are some of the most important molecules in biology. For example, DNA is a double-helix ladder that is intrinsically chiral. And so are the proteins encoded by these fundamental biological molecules, which are the bricks and mortars of the cell, doing all the work that makes us alive.

Quantum mechanics is all-across biology: Photosynthesis. Cellular respirationc. Oxygen transport.Cellular mutations.

Are all governed by quantum effects.

These happen randomly and are governed by quantum probability rules.

One can zoom in further on life, under the skin all the way to the molecules at the atomic level and clouds of electrons in quantum states. In everyday life, we are used to electrons being transported through copper wires to deliver electricity to our homes.

But what are the wires that deliver electrons in living system, a process that involves substantial amounts of energy and heat? And how do they avoid frying life, or by proxy, us?

In living systems, how electrons are transferred or transported depends on organic molecules, Mujica said. Now, organic molecules are far less efficient than copper wires or anything like that to transport or transfer electrons. But nevertheless, evolution chose this in a way.

Mujica refers to this as a real mystery as to why Mother Nature chose these lousy molecules for transferring electrons.

Yet, as Jeff Goldblums quirky scientist character in "Jurassic Park" famously once said: "Life finds a way.

It turns out electrons are transported in organic molecules primarily by tunneling, not diffusion as in copper wires.

The mechanism electrons going through organic molecules is to a large extent a quantum phenomenon, Mujica said Its a mechanism called tunneling, and what it implies is that electrons can go from one region of the molecule to the other, even if they do not have enough energy to overcome intrinsic barriers.

The research team wants to investigate why and how electrons use this tunneling mechanism for biological function essential to life. First, they have designed a series of experiments using synthetic pairs of right or left-handed DNA structures. Next, they will custom tailor electron donors andacceptors as part of their structures to probe this chirality-dependentelectron transfer. All this experimental effort is guided by a predictive theoretical and computational effort.

Some of themodelsystems tweaks they will examine are the effect of the electron donor-acceptordistance, the temperature, redox properties and the coupling to their surrounding environment.

An electron transfer process with the electron-vibration (phonon) interaction. The process is essential to understanding and controlling charge and energy flow in various electronic, photonic and energy conversion devices or, in this case, a biomolecule. The "IN" and "OUT" have either the same or distorted phase, depending on whether the transport is coherent or incoherent.

A fundamental quantum electron property is spin. Electrons can be like spinning tops, rotating on their own axis.

Mujica explains that because electrons are charged particles, "this rotation creates a magnetic moment, which only has two components; one component aligns in the direction of transport and the other component is aligned in the opposite direction to transport.

"As they tunnel through chiral organic molecules, they have a preferential orientation due to the spin orbit interaction and the loss of time-inversion symmetry.

This is known as spin polarization.

It turns out, when electron spin is polarized, electrons can tunnel much easier and farther because one of the two spin components has a larger transmission probability.

Mujica likens it to a bullet going through the barrel of a gun. The first guns that were ever made all had smooth, hollowed-out barrels. But when grooves were etched, it gave the bullet a spin that allowed it to travel straighter and farther. Also, it is easy to understand with this simple analogy that bullets rotating clockwise will not go through counter-clockwise designed barrels, and vice versa. A classical analogy to what happens with electron spins.

And so, for their second set of experiments, they willuse magnetic substrates, nanoscale chemical patterning, andmultimodalspin-polarized scanningtunneling microscopyand spectroscopieswith orientedenantiomeric pairs of DNAandintercalated metalstoelucidate and to quantifythe molecular and interface contributionstochirality-induced spin selectivity.

Since most biological molecules, including amino acids inproteins and nucleotides in RNA and DNA, are chiral, thecriticalroles of spin polarization inelectron transport within and between biological molecules will be determined.

Finally, electrons have a dual particle-wave quantum nature; they have particle-like properties such as mass and charge, but their dynamics and propagation follows the rules of wave quantum mechanics.

In biology, as the electrons encounter other molecules or molecular barriers like cell membranes, they are scattered, and their wave properties are modified. Two wave sources arecoherentif their frequency and waveform are identical. If not, the waves can be canceled or enhanced due to interference. This interference can be destructive and leads to noise, which can also be due to thermal interactions.

Spin coherence can coexist with spin polarization Mujica said. What it means is that you have in-phase transport, so you're not reducing the intensity of the wave, and we're not changing the phase of a wave associated to that transfer.

Spin coherence is intimately associated to another quantum process, entanglement, that is of fundamental importance in quantum information and quantum computing.

Mujica says this is a high-risk, high-reward project that may upset the current conventional wisdom in quantum biology.

I mean, the common knowledge was that you couldn't have coherence in a quantum biological system, because the environmental effects would destroy coherence in a very short time.

They will try to put it all together by determining how chirality influences theelectronic, vibrational and spin-polarized electron transferfrom electrondonors to acceptor sites as spin-coherent electron pairs are generated in photo-induced electron transfer reactions.

Essentially, the grant focuses on the role of spin-polarized electrons and how it influences the behavior of biological systems, especially the length and temperature dependence, and how spin polarization and spin coherence can coexist, Mujica said. These are key unsolved issues in biological electron-transfer reactions.

In addition tostudying the unexplored roles of spin coherence in quantum biology, Mujicas team will study how it can coexist with spinpolarization and how, or if, it can create what is referred to as the spooky "action at a distance," or quantum entangled states.

The overarching Keck grant goal is to answer these questions, and the contributions of three key ingredients: tunneling, spin and coherence. These are central to discovering the underpinnings of the emerging field of quantumbiology.

By exploring these questions, Mujicas team ultimately hopes to use the Keck grant as a catalyst to create an ASU center for quantum biology, and further down the road, practical applications, such as quantum information and computing. All this could help position ASU in quantum technologies and information efforts, which are of strategic importance for the U.S.

If we can provide enough evidence, we hope to unveil some very important questions that will be crucial for an ASU effort in quantum information sciences, and this is something that we are starting with efforts in engineering and physics, Mujica said.

We want to weigh in on the roadmap to be able to use molecules for quantum information. From our perspective, we really think of this as a step in the direction of defining our capabilities of using quantum biology in molecular quantum information sciences, a field that is experiencing a true renaissance.

Originally posted here:
Keck award will help scientists take quantum leap to explore the mysteries of life - ASU News Now

From a nanoscale brobot flexing its muscles to a discussion of the artistry of scientific images, participants at a March 9 event got an up-close look at how quantum science and nanotechnology are shaping our lives.

Arts Unplugged: Science of the Very, Very Small included both online and in-person activities, centered around 11 TED-style talks given by faculty members in the College of Arts and Sciences. The faculty shared their research and thoughts on topics from gene manipulation and miniature robots to ethical considerations of nanotech and the interplay between science and fiction through an online eCornell presentation, which was also livestreamed to audiences in the Groos Family Atrium in Klarman Hall and the Clark Atrium in the Physical Sciences Building.

Members of the Cornell community attempt some origami during the event.

Im a particle physicist and particle physicists like to take things apart until we find their smallest constituents, pulling them apart until theres nothing indivisible anymore, said Peter Wittich, professor of physics (A&S) and director of the Laboratory of Elementary Particle Physics, echoing the Arts Unplugged theme.

The event brought together scientists and humanists from numerous fields, including physics, chemistry, biology, literature and moral psychology. Natalie Wolchover, senior science editor and writer at Quanta Magazine and the Zubrow Distinguished Visiting Journalist in A&S, served as moderator, asking questions of each of the panelists after their presentations.

We tend to think of ourselves as small in the grand scheme of things, and understandably so: The universe is huge, Wolchover said. Youd have to line up 500 trillion trillion humans head to toe to stretch across the observable universe. And yet, somehow its still easier to conceive of how much bigger space is compared to us than it is to imagine how small the smallest things in the universe are relative to us.

John Marohn, professor of chemistry and chemical biology (A&S), is building a microscope that can image things smaller than a nanometer the size of an individual water molecule.

Were using this to image spins in quantum materials to study quantum computing, but were also using this to image the molecules of life, he said.

Roald Hoffmann, the Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology (A&S), spoke of the beauty of scientific images, showing an image of the nanoworld that he compared to a chocolate wafer and another that looked like sand dunes.

These are images that convey information, but they also have some significance just as images, Hoffmann said. The scientists are making artistic choices they dont think they are, but they are in the process of showing them.

Ailong Ke, professor of molecular biology and genetics (A&S), talked about how CRISPR technology can be used to combat disease.

In the next phase of our study, we really hope to bring [about CRISPRs] therapeutic power, Ke said, which could be used to delete viruses from our genome or halt the growth of cancer cells.

Directly after Kes talk, Julia Markovits, associate professor of philosophy (A&S), discussed the slippery slope argument that is often used to justify prohibiting a new technology like gene editing. If we use CRISPR to cure sickle cell anemia, for example, applying the slippery slope means that designer babies would inevitably follow. But such reasoning is faulty, said Markovits: a better metaphor would be a string of dominoes where its difficult to topple the entire string.

Eun-Ah Kim, professor of physics (A&S), talked about her work studying social phenomena of electrons. We are a lucky generation because we can see these electron spins implemented into a set of qubits that can be individually controlled, to be programmed for computation, in quantum computers, she said. In my research, I try to bridge this nascent technology with more established classical computing.

Other A&S faculty presenting included:

During the programs intermission, Michael Reynolds, M.S. 17, Ph.D. 21, postdoctoral associate in the Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the College of Engineering, demonstrated an origami model of a nanobot for viewers to try.

About 30 students from the Milstein Program in Technology and Humanity attended the livestream in Clark Atrium and attempted the origami duck, with some in-person help from Reynolds. Those attending the livestream in Klarman Hall were assisted by Qingkun Liu, postdoctoral researcher in physics. Origami design principles are used by researchers, including Reynolds and Liu, working with Cohen and Paul McEuen, the John A. Newman Professor of Physical Science (A&S), as they create tiny programmable robots, including the brobot.

The intermission time also included the announcement of winners of the Colleges Envisioning the Future contest Lucca Schwartz in the elementary category; Avalon Golden and Sophia Schumaecker in the high school category and Vinh Truong in the adult category. Their winning submissions can be found online on the Arts Unplugged website.

The recording of the event is available to watch for free on eCornell.

Excerpt from:
Panelists explore 'Science of the Very, Very Small' | Cornell Chronicle - Cornell Chronicle

Human beings increasingly desire to live in a world of perfection, which has become attainable thanks to advancements in technology. We have now reached the point of complete automation, thanks to the most recent technical advancements. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one such breakthrough that is godsend for businesses of all types to innovate in this cut-throat competitive period. Artificial Intelligence appears to be on the verge of a breakthrough, having turned a crisis into an opportunity for a variety of businesses across sectors and fundamentally altered the dynamics of the commercial world.

Many polls conducted by specialists across disciplines have found that AI is adding feathers to the caps of various expanding businesses, and as a result, organizations have become more open to incorporating AI technology into their working paradigm. However, when it comes to defining AI, there is still a lot of unanswered questions. An intelligent organism developed by humans with a capability to understand the term technology, is a brief definition of Artificial Intelligence. Many veterans have portrayed Artificial Intelligence as a terminator-like figure capable of acting and thinking on its own and carrying out missions without being taught.

When it comes to developing a solid business strategy, AI plays a vital role. In order to get better results, various sectors have included AI into their business strategy. When it comes to the industrial industry, AI skills have recently taken centre stage. While AI has been deployed in essential aspects of the business, manufacturing businesses have focused the majority of their efforts on fundamental production processes such as product creation, engineering, and assembly, as well as quality testing. Artificial Intelligence has shown to be a game-changer in the industrial industry. It has the potential to change the ROI of industrial operations across the board, regardless of genre.But, as previously stated, the true revolution will occur once all stakeholders recognise the importance of technology in redefining the new business era. When it comes to connecting consumers with profitable solutions and efficient products, digital innovation has paved the way for businesses.

Due to several concerns about technological challenges, the Indian industrial industry has been hesitant to adopt digitalization. However, with the widespread acceptance of digitalization internationally, India has caught the changing and evolving winds in order to stay afloat.

Technology pushing digitalisation

When it comes to industrial automation, technological breakthroughs such as the Internet of Things, connectivity, open software, and electronics have been implemented first. The availability, stable reliability, and performance of these digitalization technologies have been a prime and immediate reason for their adoption for automation and control of industrial manufacturing in the manufacturing sector, which thrives on precision and mission-critical applications and is heavily bound by forward and backward synchronised processes. The manufacturing industry has experienced an increase in demand for customised technical advances to help them improve their processes, as they perceive reliability in its applications across many product categories, which improves time efficiency in industrial controls and automation.

This is just the beginning; industry executives, although being pioneers in their areas, are welcoming digitalization with open arms. This shift in attitude has occurred since digitalization has proven to be a lifesaver in the face of the current pandemic. Manufacturing organisations have been able to maintain and hold their position on supply chain and production targets through time-bound deliveries across global areas, particularly in Asia, thanks to digitalization. Only now, as the benefits of digitalization in automation have become clear to company leaders and forerunners in the field, has it begun to be widely implemented. Given the current upheaval produced by Covid, the industrys perspectives on the benefits of digitalization have been sharpened.

The global manufacturing sector is concentrating on digitalization to improve customer centricity, increase the efficiency of marketing strategies, and channel attractive market prospects through simple and ready-to-use pathways of established procedures. Production will benefit from digitalization in terms of planning, operation, and maintenance.

When it comes to digital hauls for industry,quantum computingis picking frills as well. Companies believe that using exponential data processing in research and development will improve process efficiency while also saving time and resources. Details of highly complex chemical reaction processes can be digitally simulated and analysed in a short amount of time with the help of quantum computing.

Traditional automation suppliers fought hard against the adoption of Ethernet networks and Microsoft support, but they gradually recognised and accepted it. External technologies have increased the pace of production in the industrial business, increasing competitiveness. To maintain competition, it blends industrial automation and business information into computer architecture. A decade ago, no one imagined that technology would be welcomed by the rigorously mechanical industrial manufacturing industry in order to improve production efficiency. However, production efficacy is the key to survival.

Today, the manufacturing sectors future appears brighter; it does not seem to be an unusual ripped page from the book of business synchronicities. Change is never easy to accept, adopt, or execute, but for the industrial manufacturing business, it is necessary to gather fresh sails in order to reach a new shore.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

Read more:
Developing an AI-ready business era is the need of the hour - Times of India

Im a history junkie. So, in this special Sunday issue of Hypergrowth Investing, let me start by sharing an interesting story from history that I bet a lot of you have never heard before but which, interestingly enough, could be the key to enabling you to make money in this tough market.

Back in October of 1927, the worlds leading scientists descended upon Brussels for the fifth Solvay Conference an exclusive, invite-only conference dedicated to discussing and solving the outstanding preeminent open problems in physics and chemistry.

In attendance were scientists that, today, we praise as the brightest minds in the history of humankind.

Albert Einstein was there so was Erwin Schrodinger, who devised the famous Schrodingers cat experiment and Werner Heisenberg, the man behind the world-changing Heisenberg uncertainty principle and Louis de Broglie. Max Born. Neils Bohr. Max Planck.

The list goes on and on. Of the 29 scientists who met in Brussels in October 1927, 17 of them went on to win a Nobel Prize.

These are the minds that collectively created the scientific foundation upon which the modern world is built.

And yet, when they all descended upon Brussels nearly 94 years ago, they got stumped by one concept one concept that for nearly a century has remained the elusive key to unlocking the full potential of humankind.

And now, for the first time ever, that concept which stumped even Einstein is turning into a disruptive reality, via a breakthrough technology that will change the world as we know it, and potentially even save it from a global war.

So what exactly were Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, and the rest of those Nobel Laureates talking about in Brussels back in 1927?

Quantum mechanics.

Now, to be clear, quantum mechanics is a big, complex topic that would require 500 pages to fully understand, but heres my best job at making a Cliffs Notes version in 500 words instead

For centuries, scientists have developed, tested, and validated the laws of the physical world which are known as classical mechanics. These laws scientifically explain how things work. Why they work. Where they come from. So on and so forth.

But the discovery of the electron in 1897 by J.J. Thomson unveiled a new, subatomic world of super-small things that didnt obey the laws of classical mechanics at all. Instead, they obeyed their own set of rules, which have since become known as quantum mechanics.

The rules of quantum mechanics differ from the rules of classical mechanics in two very-weird, almost-magical ways.

First, in classical mechanics, objects are in one place, at one time. You are either at the store, or at home.

But, in quantum mechanics, subatomic particles can theoretically exist in multiple places at once before they are observed. A single subatomic particle can exist in point A and point B at the same time, until we observe it, at which point it only exists at either point A or point B.

So, the true location of a subatomic particle is some combination of all its possible locations.

This is called quantum superposition.

Second, in classical mechanics, objects can only work with things that are also real. You cant use your imaginary friend to help move the couch. You need your real friend to help you.

But, in quantum mechanics, all of those probabilistic states of subatomic particles are not independent. Theyre entangled. That is, if we know something about the probabilistic positioning of one subatomic particle, then we know something about the probabilistic positioning of another subatomic particle meaning that these already super-complex particles can actually work together to create a super-complex ecosystem.

This is called quantum entanglement.

So, in short, subatomic particles can theoretically have multiple probabilistic states at once, and all those probabilistic states can work together again, all at once to accomplish some task.

And that, in a nutshell, is the scientific breakthrough that stumped Einstein back in the early 1900s.

It goes against everything classical mechanics had taught us about the world. It goes against common sense. But its true. Its real. And, now, for the first time ever, we are leaning how to harness this unique phenomenon to change everything about everything

Mark my words. Everything will change over the next few years because of quantum mechanics and some investors are going to make a lot of money.

The study of quantum theory has made huge advancements over the past century, especially so over the past decade, wherein scientists at leading technology companies have started to figure out how to harness the magical powers of quantum mechanics to make a new generation of super quantum computers that are infinitely faster and more powerful than even todays fastest supercomputers.

Again, the physics behind quantum computers is highly complex, but heres my Cliffs Notes version

Todays computers are built on top of the laws of classical mechanics. That is, they store information on what are called bits which can store data binarily as either 1 or 0.

But what if you could harness the power of quantum mechanics to turn those classical bits into quantum bits or qubits that can leverage superpositioning to be both 1 and 0 data stores at the same time?

Even further, what if you could take those quantum bits and leverage entanglement to get all of the multi-state bits to work together to solve computationally taxing problems?

You would theoretically create a machine with so much computational power that it would make even todays most advanced supercomputers look like they are from the Stone Age.

Thats exactly what is happening today.

Google has built a quantum computer that is about 158 million times faster than the worlds fastest supercomputer.

Thats not hyperbole. Thats a real number.

Imagine the possibilities if we could broadly create a new set of quantum computers 158 million times faster than even todays fastest computers

Wed finally have the level of AI that you see in movies. Thats because the biggest limitation to AI today is the robustness of machine learning algorithms, which are constrained by supercomputing capacity. Expand that capacity, and you get infinitely improved machine learning algos, and infinitely smarter AI.

We could eradicate disease. We already have tools like gene editing, but the effectiveness of gene editing relies of the robustness of the underlying computing capacity to identify, target, insert, cut, and repair genes. Insert quantum computing capacity, and all that happens without an error in seconds allowing for us to truly fix anything about anyone.

We could finally have that million-mile EV. We can only improve batteries if we can test them, and we can only test them in the real-world so much. Therefore, the key to unlocking a million-mile battery is through cellular simulation, and the quickness and effectiveness of cellular simulation rests upon the robustness of the underlying computing capacity. Make that capacity 158 million times bigger, and cellular simulation will happen 158 million times faster.

The economic opportunities here are truly endless.

But so are the risks

Did you know that most of todays cybersecurity systems are built on top of maths-based cryptography? That is, they protect data through encryption that can only be cracked through solving a super-complex math problem. Today, that works, because classical computers cannot solve those super-complex math problems very quickly.

But quantum computers that are 158 million times faster than todays classical computers will be able to solve those math problems in the blink of an eye. Therefore, quantum computers threaten to obsolete maths-based cryptography as we know it, and will compromise the bulk of the worlds modern cybersecurity systems.

Insiders call this the Quantum Threat. Its a huge deal. When the Quantum Threat arrives, no digital data will be safe.

Back in 2019, computer scientists believed the Quantum Threat to be a distant threat something that may happen by 2035. However, since then, rapid advancements in quantum computing capability have considerably moved up that timeline. Today, many experts believe the Quantum Threat will arrive in the 2025 to 2030 window.

That means the world needs to start investing in quantum-proof encryption today and thats why, from an investment perspective, we believe quantum encryption stocks will be among the markets biggest winners in the 2020s.

The global information security market is tracking towards $300 BILLION. That entire market will have to inevitably shift towards quantum encryption by 2030. Therefore, were talking the creation of a $300 billion market to save the planet from a security meltdown.

And, at the epicenter of this multi-hundred-billion-dollar, planet-saving megatrend, is one tiny startup that is pioneering the single most robust quantum encryption technology platform that world has ever seen

This company is working with the U.S. government, the UK government, and various other defense and intelligence agencies to finalize its breakthrough technology platform. The firm plans to launch the quantum encryption system, globally, in 2023.

If the tech works at scale, this tiny stock which is trading for less than $20 will roar higher by more than 10X by 2025.

And guess what? We just bought this stock in our flagship investment research product, Innovation Investor.

Trust me. This is a stock pick you are not going to want to miss it may be the single most promising investment opportunity Ive come across over the past few years.

And, with a war raging on in Europe for the first time since World War II, the economic and political importance of this stock has never been bigger.

To gain access to that stock pick and a full portfolio of other potential 10X tech stock picks for the 2020s click here.

On the date of publication, Luke Lango did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article

See more here:
The Explosive Quantum Computing Stock That Could Save the World - InvestorPlace

In December 2016, the U.S. National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) announced a competition to select new quantum resistant public key encryption algorithms that would eventually supersede the classical RSA and other public key cryptography algorithms that may be vulnerable to future quantum computers. For the past five years they have been receiving nominations, holding conferences, and going through three rounds of selection to determine which ones to recommend based upon security, performance, and other factors. They are very close to completing Round 3 and will announce their initial selections of new algorithms to recommend. Some algorithms still need more study and there will be a Round 4 to see if any additional ones should be standardized too. In the chart below, the algorithms shown as Finalists are being considered for standardization in Round 3 and the algorithms shown as Alternates are being considered for further analysis and possible standardization in Round 4.

Once the Round 3 selections are announced, NIST will publish a report explaining their decisions. After that, there will still be additional work to draft the standards, call for public comments, and the selections probably wont be officially formalized until 2024. But we see these as activities as formalities that wont create any significant changes. In addition, the Round 4 analysis and recommendation activities will take 12-18 months to complete after the Round 4 candidates are announced.

When we listen to presentations from various consultants and quantum computing providers, we often hear the message that enterprises should start investigating quantum computing now or else they will be left behind. But it is our view that it is just as important, if not more, for enterprises to allocate resources and start right now planning how to migrate their entire digital communications infrastructure to use quantum resistant encryption techniques. Although it may take another 10 years or so before a large enough quantum computer is available to run Shors algorithm and break the current public key algorithms, experience has shown that it takes 10 years or more to implement new encryption technology in the thousands of computers and software programs that are in use within a typical enterprise.

For those CIOs who experienced the intensive Y2K conversion activities twenty years ago, this migration will likely be significantly more complex. The number of computers, smartphones, IoT, and other digital devices in use today is orders of magnitude higher than it was earlier this century. Also, while Y2K had a specific deadline of December 31, 1999, no one really knows when the large, powerful quantum machines will be in operation. In addition, any communications of long shelf-life data may be vulnerable to a Harvest Now, Decrypt Later attack that accelerates the time frame when quantum resistant encryption is needed. So, enterprises planning a strategy have some important questions to answer such as:

With the pending announcement of the first selected algorithms from NIST, now would be the time to get going if you havent started already. For additional information on this topic, we recommend reading a white paper from the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) titled A Guide to a Quantum-Safe Organization. You can also visit the Post-Quantum Cryptography website maintained by NIST which contains an archive of the submissions, presentations, workshops and events that have occurred during this program.

March 5, 2022

See the rest here:
NIST Set to Announce Round 3 Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) Selections Within the Next Few Weeks - Quantum Computing Report