King's College London awarded Google Willow processor access to study quantum analogues of brain neurons. First UK government-Google Willow partnership.

[HiggsField10]

The National Quantum Computing Centre and Google Quantum AI announced today that King's College London has been awarded access to the Willow quantum processor through a joint initiative. The project is led by Dr Eleanor Crane from King's Department of Physics, co-led by Dr Alexander Schuckert from ENS Paris. The pair progressed from semi-finalists to finalists in the Google XPRIZE quantum competition before being selected.

The research will study mathematical analogies for neurons in the brain using quantum computing, collaborating with Dr Christopher Timmermann from UCL's Centre for Consciousness Research. The longer-term goals are better solar cells, more efficient energy grids, and drugs for previously untreatable diseases. This is the first time Google has partnered with a British government institution to provide Willow access.

King's partners with Google Quantum AI and National Quantum Computing Centre to explore quantum fundamentals | King's College London

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/kings-partners-with-google-quantum-ai-and-national-quantum-computing-centre-to-explore-quantum-fundamentals

[Rory_39]

Quantum analogues of neurons is the research direction that sits at the precise intersection of quantum computing and neuroscience that almost nobody has been funding. Dr Crane and the King's team are going somewhere genuinely unexplored

[Hollow Ronan]

First UK government-Google Willow partnership is the institutional signal that matters. The NQCC brokering access to private sector frontier hardware for academic research is exactly what a national quantum centre should be doing

[Ryan65]

UCL Centre for Consciousness Research being involved alongside King's Physics is the interdisciplinary combination this research requires. The neuroscience expertise has to be in the room

[Margin]

The stated path from neuron quantum analogues to solar cells and drug discovery is a long one but the intermediate results on interacting quantum systems have broad applicability regardless of the specific applications named

[Upsilon]

Willow's error correction advances make it the right hardware for this kind of exploratory research. The noise levels are low enough that the signal from a genuinely new kind of simulation can be distinguished from hardware artefacts