Engineering a quantum future for societal impact

The rapidly advancing field of quantum technology has the potential to reshape our society in the coming decades, in ways we can predict - and in ways we cannot. It could bring us transformative innovations across industries: quantum sensors could be used to identify disease at its smallest and earliest stages, pilot planes with more accurate and reliable navigation, and improve environmental monitoring. Quantum networks could increase the security of financial networks, even enhance democracy by enabling provably secure voting systems. Fault-tolerant quantum computers could accelerate the discovery of life-saving drugs, pinpoint fraud through the quick analysis of vast datasets, optimize transportation systems and construction schedules, enable the design of new materials with specific properties, and create a more resilient energy grid. This revolution could bring hundreds of thousands of jobs for people from a wide variety of backgrounds and education levels and create billions of dollars in economic impact by 2035. To reap these benefits, however, we need to begin thinking in new ways to enable significant technical advances and coordination to enable societal impact. These include building models of open and rigorous training to match workforce demand; creating more integrated collaboration mechanisms among academic, government, and industry stakeholders to accelerate commercialization and education efforts; and adopting government policies that balance the essential role of international cooperation with the need to protect intellectual property. These preparations and flexibility in the face of uncertainty are particularly crucial because, as past technology transformations have shown us, some of the biggest and most exciting societal impacts may well be the ones we have not yet imagined.