The Bloch Quantum Tech Hub was awarded a $500,000 Consortium Accelerator Award through the US Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) to continue implementing a strategy focused on accelerating the industry adoption of quantum technologies. The award will be used to strengthen the consortium and attract additional capital.
The Bloch is a Chicago Quantum Exchange-led coalition of Fortune 500 companies, quantum startups, world-leading universities, state and city governments, community colleges, and economic and workforce development nonprofits. It is the nation’s only quantum innovation team rallying entire sectors around society’s most urgent challenges — to combat financial fraud, secure the energy grid, and accelerate the development of life-saving drugs.
In recent months, The Bloch has partnered with the FBI Chicago to build first-in-the-nation partnerships aimed at securing our quantum assets; rallied quantum technologists and the financial sector around fraud detection; and partnered with quantum companies to offer no-cost access to the IonQ Aria quantum system via the qBraid platform for projects that have the potential for commercial impact, applied research significance, and regional benefit. It has also collaborated with community colleges and industry partners to develop the future quantum workforce, and partnered with MxD to cohost a daylong symposium to explore the integration of quantum technology into manufacturing, an event that drew Pritzker, US Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), as well as policymakers, researchers, and manufacturing industry professionals.
“By supporting The Bloch Quantum, the EDA is advancing our efforts to enhance fraud detection, improve the energy grid, and accelerate drug development,” said Meera Raja, The Bloch’s interim regional innovation officer and the senior vice president of deep tech for P33. “This is work that will not only harness quantum technologies to solve real problems for real people, it will create jobs and strengthen our economic and national security.”
The Tech Hubs Program’s Consortium Accelerator Award will enable The Bloch to continue building momentum in a quantum ecosystem that has scored a series of high-profile wins this month. In the past two weeks, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has announced the development of a groundbreaking quantum campus on Chicago’s South Side, a deal with Palo Alto-based startup PsiQuantum to anchor the campus, and a partnership with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a quantum proving ground on the campus. This progress, along with projects such as the CQE-led NSF Engines Development Award: Advancing quantum technologies in the Midwest and the efforts of The Bloch, are projected to drive $60 billion in economic impact for the region by 2035.
“This boost comes at a time of extraordinary progress for an ecosystem in which each project has the potential to amplify the rest,” said David Awschalom, the Liew Family Professor of Molecular Engineering in the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and the director of the CQE. “The EDA’s award will accelerate industrial engagement in the region, adding to our momentum and putting us the closer to realizing the transformative potential of quantum technologies.”
The Tech Hubs program is a flagship initiative of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Investing in America agenda, which supports regional efforts to scale up the production of critical technologies, including quantum technologies. It was authorized by the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022. The statute authorized $10 billion for the program over five years. To date, EDA has been appropriated $541 million for the program. If subsequent funding becomes available, EDA plans to invest in additional Tech Hubs, keeping this innovative program’s momentum going for decades to come.
“The Biden-Harris Administration is working to build world-class ecosystems across the nation that will advance America’s global leadership in technologies of the future, catalyze the creation of good jobs, and strengthen US national and economic security,” said Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development Alejandra Y. Castillo. “These Consortium Accelerator Awards demonstrate the level of excellence every designee embodies and will enable Tech Hubs to not only keep up their momentum, but also leverage their coveted designation to attract additional collaboration and capital.”