Quantum News Briefs December 7: Infleqtion Announces Collaboration with Morningstar; Top 10 retailer chooses QuintessenceLabs for quantum encryption advanced data security; Aliro Quantum Co-Founder and CTO, Dr. , named a 2023 U.S. Science Envoy by the Secretary of State + MORE

Quantum News Briefs December 7: Infleqtion Announces Collaboration with Morningstar; Top 10 retailer chooses QuintessenceLabs for quantum encryption advanced data security; Aliro Quantum Co-Founder and CTO, Dr. , named a 2023 U.S. Science Envoy by the Secretary of State + MORE

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Infleqtion Announces Collaboration with Morningstar

Infleqtion announced December 6 the integration of SuperstaQ, Infleqtion’s flagship quantum software, into Morningstar Direct, Morningstar’s investment and portfolio analysis platform. Quantum News Briefs summarizes below.
The integration of SuperstaQ will allow investors to harness the power of quantum computing through Morningstar Direct’s Analytics Lab module, which lets users program their own “notebooks” to create custom analytics and discover new investment opportunities.
“Combining Morningstar’s data, research and analytics with enhanced solving frameworks and capabilities provided by SuperstaQ will allow investors to experiment, learn and enjoy the benefits of quantum, preparing them for when quantum advantage is achieved,” said Paul Lipman, President of Quantum Information Platforms at Infleqtion.
Infleqtion’s quantum-enabled notebooks, which will live in Analytics Lab, transform specific investment problems, such as building a risk-optimized portfolio, into queries designed for quantum computing. When users execute these quantum formulations through SuperstaQ, they can unlock novel insights.
Morningstar Direct is an investment and portfolio analysis platform that empowers investor success by helping users tell their investment story. Morningstar Direct unites Morningstar’s data and institutional research with private and third-party content, advanced analytics, data science capabilities, and productivity tools.
SuperstaQ is Infleqtion’s flagship quantum software platform that allows users without quantum expertise to run quantum programs. SuperstaQ communicates directly with quantum computers, sending quantum circuits – that have been optimized for peak performance via a proprietary algorithm – for execution on the hardware’s native gate set. SuperstaQ was developed by Super.tech, a subsidiary of Infleqtion acquired in May 2022 that makes software and solutions to accelerate the commercial adoption of this burgeoning technology. Super.tech was originally spun out of pioneering quantum computing research from the University of Chicago. Click here to read announcement in-entirety.

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Top 10 retailer chooses QuintessenceLabs for quantum encryption advanced data security

QuintessenceLabs announced December 6 that one of the leading home retailers has migrated from RSA DPM to the QuintessenceLabs’ Trusted Security Foundation® (TSF®) key and policy manager to ensure the security of its transactional data. Quantum News Briefs summarizes below.
This capability will enable the retailer to achieve Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance while preparing it for the age of quantum computer-based threats.
QuintessenceLabs’ TSF key and policy manager delivers secure, centralized, and highly interoperable key and policy management across any organization. As a virtual machine or hardware appliance, the TSF key and policy manager can manage keys over their full life cycle, implement strong object and user policy management, and offers built-in replication — up to 16 nodes for maximum availability.
TSF key and policy manager supports non-profit standards body OASIS Open’s Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) and can be seamlessly integrated into legacy infrastructure such as IBM, HP, Oracle and NetApp, with minimal disruption and delay.  The TSF key and policy manager also supports thousands of end-client systems, tens of millions of keys, and transaction rates of 8,000 key requests per minute per node. Click here to read complete announcement.

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Aliro Quantum Co-Founder and CTO, Dr. , named a 2023 U.S. Science Envoy by the Secretary of State

Aliro Quantum, The Quantum Networking Company™, today announced that Co-Founder and CTO, Dr. Prineha Narang, has been named as one of seven distinguished scientists to serve as U.S. Science Envoys for 2023. As a Science Envoy for Quantum Information Science and Technology, Dr. Narang will engage internationally with civil society as well as government interlocutors to help inform the Department of State, other U.S. government agencies, and the scientific community about opportunities for science and technology cooperation.
Created in 2010, the Science Envoy Program engages eminent U.S. scientists and engineers to strengthen bilateral science and technology relationships, advance policy objectives, advocate for merit-based, transparent, peer-reviewed scientific institutions, promote science education and public engagement, highlighting the role of science in society and advise U.S. government representatives on programs and opportunities which may support collaborative activities.
Dr. Narang is a renowned scholar in theoretical and computational quantum science. In addition to her role as CTO of Aliro Quantum, Dr. Narang is on faculty in Physical Sciences at UCLA where she holds the Howard Reiss Chair. Her group works on theoretical and computational quantum materials, non-equilibrium dynamics, and transport in quantum matter. Prior to moving to UCLA, she was an Assistant Professor of Computational Materials Science at Harvard University. Before starting on the Harvard faculty in 2017, Dr. Narang was an Environmental Fellow at HUCE, and worked as a research scholar in condensed matter theory in the Department of Physics at MIT. She received an M.S. and Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Caltech in 2015.
Aliro Quantum spun out of Dr. Narang’s NarangLab and includes world-class experts in quantum and classical networking. The company is leading the charge in quantum network development by offering the foundational technologies needed for organizations around the world to build scalable and powerful distributed quantum systems. It recently launched AliroNet™, a comprehensive multipurpose entanglement-based Quantum Network solution.  Click here to read complete announcement

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Rigetti to bring quantum machine learning applications to Strangeworks Platform

Strangeworks, Inc. and Rigetti Computing, Inc. (“Rigetti”) (Nasdaq: RGTI) announced on Decmeber 6 Strangeworks’ commitment to make available on its platform two new quantum machine learning (QML) applications from Rigetti. Quantum News Briefs summarizes.
These new QML applications are Rigetti’s quantum kernel and quantum convolutional “quanvolutional” neural network methods, which are optimized specifically for Rigetti quantum computers and are designed to advance the development of applications related to classification and regression problems. These QML applications are expected to initially be available exclusively on the Strangeworks platform in early 2023.
The applications are planned to be made available through Rigetti’s on-demand, pay-as-you-go access model via Strangeworks. This on-demand access to Rigetti systems has been enabled by tightly integrating Rigetti’s quantum processing units with the Strangeworks platform. The integration has also resulted in higher performance of Rigetti systems on Strangeworks by enabling lower overall program latency and native Quil programming language support.
Rigetti has also announced its intent to join the Strangeworks Backstage Pass program, with plans to offer up to $10,000 of sponsored credits to each approved user. Rigetti plans to prioritize users with an interest in quantum machine learning for enterprise applications, including but not limited to those interested in leveraging Rigetti’s quanvolutional neural network method. To apply for access to Rigetti through the Backstage Pass program, please visit https://strangeworks.com/backstage. Click here to read the complete announcement.

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Sandra K. Helsel, Ph.D. has been researching and reporting on frontier technologies since 1990.  She has her Ph.D. from the University of Arizona.