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Rafal Janik believes quantum computing will fundamentally transform society over the next few decades, similar to how digital computers changed life over the last 60 years.
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He and others across the world are laying the groundwork for a future where quantum computers could solve some of the most complex problems, from climate change to designing a new generation of super batteries and even curing cancer.
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Toronto-based Xanadu Quantum Computing, where Janik is the chief operating officer, is now partnering with researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton to explore and experiment in a type of therapy that could be pivotal in treating disease.
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“This is really about making quantum computers useful,” Janik said. “What are those killer applications?”
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Xanadu will be collaborating with a team headed by Alex Brown, a professor and chairman in the department of chemistry at the U of A. The goal is to see if Xanadu’s quantum computer is capable of coming up with new options for photodynamic therapy, a treatment that can kill cancerous tumours in patients.
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Why go quantum?
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Part of the work in quantum computing, and a core goal at Xanadu, is finding useful applications for the computers.
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The technology is still very experimental and relies on exploiting the principles of quantum physics to perform computing faster than traditional computers could.
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Xanadu’s computers are based on photonic platforms, meaning they use light particles to form the basic units of data, called qubits — similar to regular bits in classical computers. A functional quantum computer requires a large number of qubits, something that can be difficult, but easier to scale in photonic quantum computing.
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One computer the company put online in 2022 was able to solve a problem that the world’s then-strongest supercomputers would have taken seven million years to solve. Their computer did it in two minutes.
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When it comes to pharmaceuticals, creating the right drug could involve synthesizing hundreds or even thousands of options, testing them in a lab, all before even reaching clinical trials.
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Instead of doing that all in real-time in the physical world, quantum computing could allow researchers to test everything in a computer, with a precision level that emulates how things would behave in the real world.
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No scalpel, no problem
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Brown said Xanadu first reached out to him about some work he had published on the topic of photodynamic therapy. His work relied on testing things using classical computing.
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Brown said quantum computing could have some advantages for studying these systems. The plan, Brown said, is to use traditional or classical computer algorithms and to compare them with quantum computing in order to see where they can find advantages.
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“I would say that the stage right now is the exploratory stage,” Brown said.