Jake Taylor, assistant director for quantum information science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, discussed several developments in the field of quantum computing in 2019 and one of those is the implementation of the National Quantum Initiative Act, Nextgov reported Thursday.
“That really was the capstone of an effort to codify a big expansion in quantum information science, which includes sensors, networking and computation,” Taylor said of the law. “It was a strong bipartisan-supported bill run through the House and Senate and signed by the president to say that the nation as a whole needs to do more in this space, we need to in a coordinated manner and that civilian agencies will take a leadership approach—and in the course of the last year, we went from having a legislated mandate to do this, to implementing the main tasks of that effort.”
Taylor said the Department of Energy, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Science Foundation are the implementing agencies of the law and have been advancing quantum computing-related initiatives.
He cited OSTP’s release in November of an update to the national strategic computing initiative with insight from OSTP Director Kelvin Droegemeier. “In the last year we have seen tremendous change in the high-performance computing landscape and with [Droegemeier] on board we went back and looked at what are the directions we need to go to ensure that the nation is a leader in HPC—and the future of computing,” Taylor said.
