Why Quantum Engineering Is Emerging as a Distinct Industrial Sector

Why build an industry around a scale that cuts across established verticals? This question occurred to me on a long flight to Paris, to attend the opening ceremony of the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), at UNESCO headquarters last month. I was part of an IEEE delegation led by 2025 IEEE President Kathleen Kramer. The event celebrated the 100th anniversary of several seminal quantum-science publications, including Wolfgang Pauli’s paper on his exclusion principle; Werner Heisenberg’s “Quantum-theoretical Re-interpretation of Kinematic and Mechanical Relations,” the first mathematically consistent formulation of quantum mechanics; and Max Born’s and Pascual Jordan’s treatise on matrix mechanics in “On Quantum Mechanics.” That Paris event made me realize that quantum engineering has evolved very differently from, say, nanotechnology. In the early 2000s, governments around the world launched initiatives to nurture the nascent field of nanotechnology. Fast- ... Read full article.