Quantum Science Will Revolutionise Security

Quantum computing is a fast-emerging area of computer science that is upending the foundations of cybersecurity. The need for rapid detection of chemical and biological threats has become far more serious issue  in recent time and quantum has the power to do this.

It's set to change how we secure our everyday communications, process credit cards, store data, and securely connect to websites. But it's also likely to disrupt modern security as we know it.

What is Quantum?

Conventional computing is based on a simple binary number concept developed for the first computers designed after World War II. Every computer instruction is translated into a sequence of 0s or 1s. In quantum computing, meanwhile, instructions can be in a state of 0 and 1 at the same time.

This allows them to work on millions of computations in parallel, exponentially speeding up the time it takes to process a task. 

This new approach to computing is predicted to radically change areas such as drug discovery, stock market prediction, gene sequencing, and, of course, cryptography, a key component of cybersecurity.

New Quantum Techniques

But now research into quantum techniques to more quickly detect explosives and exotic types of quantum camouflage have received funding from the US Department of Defense’s (DoD)  2020 Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program. The four faculty members who have been awarded projects in the competitive funding program are members of the Purdue Quantum Science and Engineering Institute PQSEI in Purdue’s Discovery Park, a multi-disciplinary hub. 

Purdue has a long history of supporting DoD missions. PQSEI fosters the development of practical and impactful aspects of quantum science, and focuses on discovering and studying new materials and basic physical quantum systems that will be suited for integration into tomorrow’s technology. 

The MURI program is supported by the US Army Research Office, the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the US Office of Naval Research. According to the US Department of Defense, the program convenes teams of multiple disciplines to facilitate the growth of new technologies to solve the DoD’s unique problems.

One of the projects, New Approaches to Quantum Control with Individual Molecule Sensitivity, will seek to control individual atoms in order to fully embrace and leverage their quantum effects. 

This could lead to improved detectors for biological, chemical and explosive agents, and precise quantum control that can lead to advanced materials design. 

Another project, led by Purdue, will pursue the search of unintuitive new materials and systems that exhibit exotic electronic and optoelectronic properties, specifically those stemming from unique topological states, and truly represent a new phase of matter.

Purdue University:       ResearchGate:        OKTA:        I-HLS:        IBM: 

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