The Technology Innovation Institute, TII, a global scientific research centre and the applied research pillar of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council, ATRC, announced a new research agreement with Amazon Web Services, AWS to explore quantum computing applications.
As part of the agreement, TII will gain access to a range of quantum computing technologies via Amazon Bracket, AWS’s managed quantum computing service. In addition, TII researchers will be able to leverage AWS High Performance Computing classical computing resources to complement their work on Amazon Bracket to explore research questions in machine learning, computational chemistry, and optimisation.
Amazon Braket is a fully managed quantum computing service designed to help speed up scientific research and software development for quantum computing. The collaborative research agreement will focus on helping TII explore research questions being addressed by its Quantum Research Centre, QRC as a pathway to applications for artificial intelligence and drug discovery, finance, logistics, and industrial process simulations.
AWS will match US$500,000 in spending on the service over the next three years for all eligible projects led by TII researchers in the adoption, evaluation, and experimentation of quantum systems. To assist QRC project teams in onboarding Amazon Braket and using the service effectively, AWS will provide workshops, self-paced classes, and other support as needed to TII researchers and its partners.
The agreement between TII and AWS is designed to advance TII’s mission to provide the best possible research and development capacity to organisations in the UAE. The news also builds on AWS’s commitment to compute infrastructure in the UAE following the launch of the new Middle East, UAE Region announced in August 2022.
TII is building the first quantum computer in the Arab world and have already unveiled the first sovereign post-quantum cryptography library in the UAE. The access to AWS quantum hardware and HPC infrastructure in the cloud, in addition to their support for further enterprise partnerships, is exciting.