Celebrating World Quantum Day: Our Employees Share What Quantum Means to Them

“If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.”

— Niels Bohr, 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics

In honor of World Quantum Day, a day designed to celebrate and spread the word about quantum science and technology, we turned to some of the most passionate quantum enthusiasts we know — our own employees — and asked them “What does quantum mean to you?”

Here are just a few of the responses from our amazing team of scientists, physicists, and business leaders.

Happy World Quantum Day, everyone! We’re thrilled to be a part of this incredible journey.

What does quantum mean to you?

“To me, quantum computing is to hack nature at its most fundamental level. Make it programmable and exploit its hidden rules to break macroscopic world limitations.”

— Pau Farré, Lead, Benchmarking Programs

“Quantum computing can solve complex business problems, as evidenced by D-Wave’s commercial solutions. However, I see the potential beyond business. Quantum computing has the potential to touch human lives in a way that was previously unimaginable. Through this ground-breaking technology and predictive analytics, lives can be improved, treated, healed, and changed. To me, this is the heart of quantum computing.”

— Heather Franklin, Director of Operational Excellence

“As far as we have already come in developing quantum computers, quantum computing to me continues to be a fabulous mystery box full of surprises and a promise for solving some of our hardest problems.”

— Sara Ejtemaee, Staff Scientist

“’Nature isn’t classical,’ as Dr. Feynman said. Solving certain types of problems takes a new kind of thinking. As someone who works in the quantum computing industry, I am reminded of this every day. It’s exciting to know that we’re leveraging quantum mechanics to solve hard problems.”

— Fiona Hanington, Senior Director, Software Programs and Documentation

“It’s exciting to see so many people engaging in such a collaborative, curious way. There are opportunities to transform how teams, organizations, and industries work together and learn from each other as we collectively advance the technology and continue to discover its impact.”

— Alex Koszegi, Senior Sales Engineer

“Quantum computing means harnessing quantum dynamics to do useful, powerful computation that cannot be done any other way. It’s incredibly exciting to be developing tools that give us new capabilities and allow us to solve hard problems in our increasingly complex world.”

— Trevor Lanting, VP, Science

“Quantum computing requires pushing the boundaries of our understanding of nature at its most fundamental level and then harnessing that understanding to tackle problems that we’ve previously thought unsolvable. I’m optimistic that our generation and those to come will use these resources to make the world a better, more equitable and more sustainable place to live.”

— Allison MacDonald, Staff Scientist