Google Digital Future Initiative

Google Digital Future Initiative

Aim and background

Under its Digital Future Initiative (DFI) launched in 2021, Google Australia has dedicated $3million in new partnerships to propel Australia’s position as global quantum pioneer. The total $1 billion investment in Australian digital infrastructure, research and partnerships over five years aims to drive innovation and create Australia’s digital future.

Google has invested in Australian quantum computing research by launching partnerships with field-leading universities, including QSI at UTS. Collaborative research aims to grow Australia’s capability in quantum computing, spanning the gamut from quantum algorithms to quantum hardware research.

QSI’s Dr Marika Kieferova is the leading Australian quantum computing scientist with Google’s Quantum AI team. Dr Kieferova coordinates collaboration between Australian universities (Macquarie University, University of Technology Sydney, the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales) and represents Google’s Quantum research team in Australia.

Research project and expected outcomes

Under the program, QSI’s Director, Professor Michael Bremner, is researching the complexity of structured versus randomised quantum circuits and the relationship between the complexity of circuit certification beyond classical computation.

The Google Quantum AI team is dedicated to exploring the fundamentals of quantum computing with the view of progress towards scalable quantum computing. 

“Quantum computer science researchers and software engineers work on ongoing experiments and develop novel quantum algorithms to dramatically accelerate computational tasks, both for contemporary 'NISQ' devices as well as future error-corrected processors. We develop quantum error correction theory and software to build a fault-tolerant quantum computer, in close collaboration with experimentalists and physicists. We collaborate with industry partners searching for applications of quantum computing.” – Google Quantum AI. 

QSI Investigators 

• Prof Michael Bremner
• Dr Marika Kieferova 

Dates

• Commenced 2022

Focused research outputs

• Observation of non-Abelian exchange statistics on a superconducting processor 

• Purification-based quantum error mitigation of pair-correlated electron simulations 

• Generating Approximate Ground States of Molecules Using Quantum Machine Learning

Links to press releases

• How we’re helping build a strong digital future - for all Australians, Google blog
• Investing in Quantum computing to build a strong digital future, Google blog 
• One year of the Digital Future Initiative, Google blog