GENEVA (AN) — A Swiss foundation announced it will open a new international institute for quantum computing by March 2024 and advance its plans to offer a global science diplomacy curriculum in several years.
Each of the Geneva-based global initiatives developed by the GESDA Foundation – the creation of an Open Quantum Institute and a global science diplomacy curriculum – won pledges of millions of Swiss francs for scaling up, and, in the case of the institute, a partner to give it a home.
The new institute will be hosted at European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, a major scientific research center that is home to the world’s largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, along the Swiss-French border.
GESDA Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe said the launch of the institute known as OQI and its new website is a major milestone for GESDA since the Swiss and Geneva governments created it as an independent nonprofit foundation in 2019.
The announcement of OQI's official and pledges of funding came on Friday, the third and last day of GESDA's third annual summit, which was held at the newly inaugurated CERN Gateway Center for visitors and conferences.
"It is an initiative which is a world-wide initiative," said Brabeck-Letmathe. "As CERN is taking the lead in scaling up the Open Quantum Institute, GESDA will remain involved in the project."
OQI, with the backing of the Swiss foreign ministry and Geneva authorities, is expected to open next March 1.
"With the Open Quantum Institute, we have the first concrete proposal on how international governance can prepare for the challenges of the 21st century," said Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis, a medical doctor who has championed Swiss-branded science diplomacy as a major plank of foreign policy. "I'm convinced that Switzerland must dare to take this path."
Switzerland's largest bank UBS said it will provide funding of up to 2 million Swiss francs (US$2.22 million) annually plus some strategic expertise "over the next several years" for the institute.
"The amount which we agreed with GESDA is exactly what they asked us for," Christian Bluhm, UBS' chief risk officer, told a Geneva press conference, adding that his answer was "a bit vague, based on internal policy."
The bank's funding will cover OQI's designated "pilot phase" lasting three years. Member nations of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, agreed to host OQI during this phase so it can scale up between 2024 and 2027.
Bluhm said the bank wants to be part of the quantum journey, otherwise "we might see that the train leaves the station without us."
Separately, London-based Wellcome Trust pledged 8 million Swiss francs (US$8.87 million) for GESDA to develop a global curriculum for science diplomacy that's also planned to scale up next Oct. 2024.
Developing use cases, not new technology
CERN's Director-General Fabiola Gianotti said her organization is "proud to be hosting the three-year pilot phase of the OQI," which will benefit from CERN's experience in uniting thousands of scientists from around the world.
The new institute will give preference to developing best use cases that might accelerate efforts to achieve the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030.
GESDA also released an "intelligence report on the multilateral governance of quantum computing for the SDGs" with a foreward by Alexandre Fasel, state secretary of the Swiss foreign ministry and Switzerland's special representative for science diplomacy in Geneva.
The institute's mission will be to broaden global access to quantum computing and to start to think about how best to use it – not to develop the technology itself – so it does not wind up in the hands of a few rich and powerful nations or companies.
"The Open Quantum Institute is to apply what we know in quantum computing to societal challenges," Gianotti told reporters. "Food distribution, supply chains and things like that."
