Building a Quantum Workforce in Illinois: Why Business Leaders Should Pay Attention Now

Khullani Abdullahi (00:01.176) Hello and welcome to the AI in Chicago podcast. I'm your host, Khullani Abdullahi, the founder of Techné AI, a Chicago based AI governance risk compliance and strategy firm. AI in Chicago spotlights local academics, operators, entrepreneurs, and thinkers, as well as policy leaders who are scaling applied AI from their home in Illinois, but with a global impact. Each episode delivers practical stories and actionable insights. empowering leaders to understand AI and its use cases minus the hype. Today, we're continuing to think about AI at the intersection of different fields. In our last conversation, we discussed AI and politics. Today, we'll dive into AI at the intersection of quantum computing. A former steel site on Chicago's South Side is being reimagined as a next generation computing campus, built to take quantum technology from lab breakthroughs to real world scale. In the age of AI, compute is strategy. But quantum isn't just faster computers. It's a new stack of hardware, microelectronics, cryogenics, algorithms, talent, and industrial partnerships. And Illinois is betting big on building that stack in a single place. In this episode, we're fortunate to sit down with the CEO of the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park to unpack the nexus between AI and quantum, what it takes to build a state-backed deep tech ecosystem, and how Illinois is positioning itself for the next wave of computing, not just through research, but through infrastructure, commercialization, and workforce development. Harley, thank you so much for joining me. Harley's background, before he jumped into the CEO role, he served as the Associate Dean for Research at UIUC's Granger College of Engineering, where he oversaw large research enterprise, led research development, corporate relations, faculty development, and major external partnerships. His research focuses on the mechanics of microelectronic and quantum materials, and he has co-authored or co-authored Khullani Abdullahi (02:05.324) He's authored or co-authored over 100 journal publications and is a fellow of ASME and SES. Harley, welcome. Harley Johnson (02:14.539) Thank you. It's nice to be with you. Khullani Abdullahi (02:15.918) Thanks. Great. Thanks so much for being here. I would love for you to kick us off with your origin story. I imagine you didn't wake up one day, 16, 17, 18, and decide you were going to be the CEO of a quantum state backed enterprise that has the potential to transform computing as we know it, not just for Illinois, but the world. How did you get here? How did you arrive at this point? Harley Johnson (02:41.941) Well, right. Well, thank you for that. That's right. I didn't ever imagine being part of a project like this because there's never been a project like this. It didn't exist. But I can tell you a little bit about my professional background and sort how I got into this field. So, well, I've been at the University of Illinois as a professor for 25 years and I've been actively doing research in microelectronic materials, quantum materials for all of that time. My background is as a mechanical engineer and a material scientist. And as a graduate student, I had just finished my undergraduate degree at Georgia Tech when I went off to Brown University to graduate school and asked my new advisor for Advice about on what topics would be hot not not not what topics are timely right now, but what would what would be big in ten years and He thought about it for a bit and he came back and said I think we should do something in quantum and I that really didn't mean anything to me at the time but I took his word for it and we You know, we we worked on some of the early did some of the early work on class of materials called quantum dots Khullani Abdullahi (03:46.531) Yeah. Khullani Abdullahi (04:06.958) interesting. Harley Johnson (04:07.197) And this is a technology that's now part of some of the quantum computers that are being scaled up and will be scaled up here in Illinois. At that time, I was interested in the basic science. I still am. at that time, the end use applications were the furthest thing from my mind. It was just an interesting science problem. But over the years at the U of I, working with my students and postdocs and many collaborators, You know, we've we've seen this field evolve and grow. And even in the last five years, things have come long way. And, I work with, you know, folks from computer science and physics and engineering. Now, these areas are kind of converging around quantum computing. I would say quantum computing was at one time really the domain of. Khullani Abdullahi (05:00.279) interesting. Harley Johnson (05:05.525) the experimental physicists, and it still is. I'm not an experimental physicist. I'm a computational scientist. So I use big computers to solve problems related to materials. So I'm more like the person who will one day be a customer of quantum computers and use them to solve my science problems. In any case, over those years, I was involved in some large projects. Khullani Abdullahi (05:20.323) Right. Harley Johnson (05:34.803) in which we were building partnerships with the federal government, state government, industry. when we had an opportunity, and I can share more about that backstory as well, but when we had an opportunity to set up the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park or IQMP, I was invited to step in to lead the project. That was about a year and a half ago. So I didn't even five years ago imagine doing this. much less at the age of 16 or 17. That was not part of my plan, but it is an evolution of lot of work by a lot of scientists and engineers to grow this technology. And we're just really excited now about where we are with this big project. Khullani Abdullahi (06:19.086) question about kind of why build a park and the need for a physical space, but something that you said triggered a question in my mind. So in AI, the field went through several winters where progress stalled. Did anything similar happen in quantum computing and quantum mechanics as it in applied quantum mechanics? Like is this period of time special? And if so, kind of why? Or is it that it's just kind of been this progressive development and improvement over the years and it didn't experience any winters like AI did? Harley Johnson (06:56.672) So that's a question. I've seen in other areas of technology some cases where there have been real winters and sort of feast or famine and very cyclical kind of progression. And I don't think of quantum as having experienced that. I'm sure you may get different opinions from different people. I mean, I think it also depends on how Khullani Abdullahi (07:10.402) Right. Harley Johnson (07:25.802) granular you get when you talk about quantum. when we talk about quantum, quantum computing is part of that, but there are other areas, quantum sensing, quantum networking. And each of those sub-areas, I'm sure, have seen periods of more rapid growth and then maybe slower growth. generally, this has been an area that has just progressed steadily. I think it's progressed more slowly at first than people were. what might have hoped, but I think we've seen it accelerate in last few years. Khullani Abdullahi (07:57.396) And excellent. We'll dive into what might be driving that acceleration later. But Illinois is kind of hedging its future economic growth, betting its future economic growth potentially on quantum, the advancements in quantum computing. The state put together several RFPs. Illinois has been very successful in competing for these grants vis-a-vis other states and other sites. Why build a single unified park and physical place for quantum and microelectronics rather than kind of distributing efforts across universities and companies, which I think is kind of traditional? Why was that approach important here? Harley Johnson (08:44.576) Right. the way this kind of developed over the last few years, mean, first of all, I think we need to acknowledge kind of the position that the state was in, you know, 10 years ago. in 2017, 2018, just as the federal government was beginning to think about more investments in quantum information science through the National Quantum Information Act and QIA. Around that time, the state began making some investments. And the state of Illinois was very successful competing for some of the early federal dollars. So 2017, 2018, the state won four major grants in quantum out of 10 that were were competed nationally. the Department of Energy awarded five major grants and the National Science Foundation awarded five major grants nationally. And the of Illinois won four of them of those 10, which is really remarkable. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign won one, University of Chicago won another, Argonne National Lab won a third, and Fermilab won a fourth. So you have this incredible concentration of federal funding beginning about eight years ago. in the state of Illinois. so when two to three years ago, we set out to think about a long-term strategy for the state around microelectronics generally, and that was timed to the federal Chips and Science Act that we had under the previous administration. You know, the idea was that there would be, you know, roughly 60 billion dollars awarded by the federal government for microelectronics R &D. And so a group, small group of us sat down from the state and from some of the research institutions to think about a strategy for the state of Illinois and microelectronics. And we pretty quickly concluded that we had a strong position if we really doubled down on the Harley Johnson (11:11.296) the excellence we had in quantum, dating back to about 2017, 2018 with all the basic science. So was really a deliberate focus on progressing some of the quantum work from basic science and from the research labs into translating it out into industry and using it as an economic development strategy. So that was about two to three years ago. that strategy, which happened also to coincide with a period of time when the state was looking to attract some companies and do some business development. That led us to the idea of a technology park or a research park focused on quantum. And so the idea being that the state could make some investments in infrastructure that would catalyze growth and economic development, not just for a single company, but for the whole industry. And that's how we arrived at the plan to build the park. And I think we just drew the, we kind of reached the conclusion that the industry was ready to scale up and that there were certain investments that could be really catalytic for companies and that given some of the existing strengths of the state of Illinois, we were in a strong position to lead. Khullani Abdullahi (12:30.414) Excellent. It's surprising, but perhaps not so surprising, that previous investments and previous decisions around competing even for those four quant- or 10, I imagine you competed for, getting four of those initial quantum grants really set the stage almost a decade later for you to even be able to... to compete. I think those decade long decisions and having kind of that foresight is really compelling for, is something that I think Illinois does well in particular. there are like two things that I think business leaders today don't think about, I think most people aren't paying attention to quantum to the extent that they do. It's limited to Einstein's spooky action at a distance, science fiction films. Maybe they've heard something about IBM's computing systems. In the business world, help us understand from a timeline standpoint where we are with respect to taking research grade demos in quantum computing and then being able to integrate them and leverage them in industrial systems. that businesses build their value chains on. us think through what that means. I imagine most of my audience isn't going to know very much about quantum and quantum computing. So feel free to be as basic as you want and kind of helping us get that. But I think it's a good place to start in terms of, how do we go from, where are we on that continuum from research grade and lab to employment? Harley Johnson (14:02.867) Mm-hmm. Harley Johnson (14:12.287) Right. Okay. Yeah, sure. So I think the first thing that I'd like to think about when we have this kind of conversation is to remind people that quantum computers already exist. mean, these are real devices and they're out there and they're commercial quantum computers that you can buy. I think that's important to keep in mind because you also hear lots of maybe discussion about, scaling up and when will quantum computers be a real thing? Well, they are real thing. mean, it's already available on the market. And you mentioned IBM. IBM sells quantum computers. They don't sell a lot. They've only sold a few and they're very expensive. And I think the key point is that, as you suggested, they're not at a point where they are sort of like dominate the way that we use computing for enterprise applications. Khullani Abdullahi (14:56.194) Yes. Harley Johnson (15:10.783) So they're still kind of in their early stages, right? But they exist in their real commercial systems. The way to think about that is that scaling up quantum computers from the of the research laboratory into like really powerful systems that we think they one day will become, that's really hard to do. These are really complicated physical systems that are, let's just say, resistant to scaling for certain reasons. The physical principles that they operate on and the stabilizing the quantum states that are required to make these work are hard to scale up. But there has been a lot of progress toward that scale up across multiple versions of quantum computers. And there are four or five what we call modalities of quantum computers that each of which are very different from one another. mean, so hardware types are very distinct, but there's been a lot of progress made in all of them. And what we're looking to do is get to a point where the systems are big enough that they reach a maturity that makes them more powerful by some definition than what we call classical computers. And when that happens, we will immediately start to see applications that we can solve on quantum computers that we not been able to solve yet on classical computers. And I think we're at a point where we're in that phase where we're starting to see some applications. If you define problems in a certain way and measure them in a particular way, starting to see Specialized examples where quantum computers are superior to classical computers for certain problems. Now the hardware is progressing and the leading quantum computing companies, which include some of the giants like IBM and Google, Microsoft, as well as some very promising startups like company like PsiQuantum, one of our partners, and others, Inflection is another one of our partners. Harley Johnson (17:37.375) Both the giants and some of the startups are making progress on their hardware and have roadmaps that suggest that in anywhere from now to three or four years from now, you'll see what we refer to sometimes as quantum advantage. It's not only the hardware scale-up that's important though, it's also the algorithms. The nature of the quantum computers is that these are systems that going to be able to certain types of computational problems very efficiently, but the types of computational problems that can be solved depend largely upon the algorithms and the software that are available. Because the way that they solve these problems is different than classical computers, therefore it requires different software and algorithms. So we're working... Khullani Abdullahi (18:30.892) Yeah. Harley Johnson (18:32.286) with our partners and with network of researchers, both on the hardware and the software side. And software side is where you start to see connections into AI, for example. like how you solve certain kind of machine learning problems. There are quantum algorithms that are going to revolutionize some of those areas of AI. But for a business leader thinking about when is quantum kind of ready to go, depending on your your industry sector and your niche, you might start to see some of those early wins later this year or next year. Khullani Abdullahi (19:12.526) Just saying. I'm really glad that you... I thought your answer was really insightful and lovely because I think what it does is change the time horizon for a business leader to account for quantum from 10 to 15 years, which I think most people have quantum bucketed in as a next business cycle a decade from now of consideration to a current business cycle consideration. Harley Johnson (19:36.591) Mm-hmm. Khullani Abdullahi (19:42.59) Something that I want to pull on that you shared was this notion of quantum computing has these modalities. And from my research where we have like PsiQuantum and we have IBM, they have different approaches to quantum computing. So is it fair to say that Illinois Strategy and IQMP is to be multimodal? and that we are kind of modality agnostic. Are we to, regardless of what quantum computing paradigm is successful, Illinois and IQMP are well positioned to capitalize on that? Would that be correct? Harley Johnson (20:25.66) Yes, yeah, that's right. mean, that's how we think of it. There are, as I said, four or five kind of physical modalities that are sort of out there and are competing to kind of, you know, for that scale up pathway and for some of those early win kind of applications. PsiQuantum has one that is based on silicon photonic technology. IBM's is based on superconducting circuits. But you also have inflection, one of our partners, Pascal Dirac. These are technologies that based on trapping individual atoms in certain quantum mechanical states or trapping spins of electrons in certain states. So they operate differently. They share certain needs in terms of infrastructure. Some of them, not all of them, require cryogenics. But that's one that we, that's a kind of infrastructure we've invested in so that we can support some of these different modalities. And they all require pretty sophisticated control electronics and other things. And so we're trying to put in place infrastructure that many of these companies can benefit from. And we hope they all succeed. mean, I think for their sake and for the sake of the end users. It would be great to see all of them succeed. It's likely, in my opinion, that more than one modality will succeed and that they will likely be good at solving different types of problems each. you know, I think when classical computing and personal computers were developing in the 1960s, 1970s, there were different ways of doing it. there were, you know, there was not just one company that emerged and became the, you know, the single company that sold computers. We still have lots of different companies that make computers and they're good at different things. So I think it's probably going to be a similar story with quantum. Khullani Abdullahi (22:28.438) Excellent. I'm glad to hear that regardless of which paradigm wins that Illinois will be well positioned to leverage those technologies. So there's a common phrase that I think has emerged in the last two years, which is that AI is kind of, and software is eating the world. When you think about quantum, how would you characterize it? Would you characterize it and imagine that it's going to replace classical computing? Harley Johnson (22:34.684) Mm-hmm. Khullani Abdullahi (22:57.422) permanently in the future? Do you think we'll have a hybrid computing world? Will it just be a specialized compute backend for certain use cases? Or do you think we'll build everything on top of quantum computing and it becomes infrastructure or a key scientific instrument? Where would you, from a mental model standpoint, at scale, how would you think about and characterize quantum computing? Harley Johnson (23:25.682) Well, there are different, I think, different schools of thought. But I think most experts would say that it's likely that quantum computing and classical computing will work together in the future. And I don't think anybody expects that quantum computers will replace classical computers. And I think we should be a little more specific. mean, we already saw early in the classical computing days, the emergence of CPUs. And then the emergence of GPUs. And GPUs became the go-to hardware modality for AI and for large language models and so on. The way that you might think of this is that there is now going to be an emergence of QPUs, a different kind of processing unit. And just like CPUs and GPUs work together, Khullani Abdullahi (24:16.664) Yeah. Harley Johnson (24:22.807) in computing workloads. QPUs will play a role in these workloads. we fully expect, in fact, it's already the case that the quantum processors that are being developed and now just starting to go to market rely on GPUs for certain tasks. I think that that's the model we expect to see. And the other thing to say is that there will likely be a lot of things that QPUs and quantum computers don't help with. And so there'll be certain computing tasks that we continue to manage with existing kind classical technology. And then other problems that we think we'll find that quantum computers just revolutionize. certain kinds of math problems are going to be best solved with QPUs. And so don't think quantum computers are going to eat the world, or they're not a tsunami or whatever metaphor you want to pick. think they're going to emerge alongside these other technologies in the form of hybrid systems. And some problems, some workloads are going to be really well aligned with these hybrid quantum classical systems and some others won't. Khullani Abdullahi (25:51.126) Excellent. I am one of the things that I came across when I was reading is that PsiQuantums technology, their chips can be built in like existing modern day foundries and don't need a specialized foundry. And so I spend a lot of time in the AI space thinking about the AI compute stack and semiconductors, et cetera. For quantum computing, help us understand kind of the interplay between the microelectronics, the advanced chips, where is that supply chain and where is Illinois with it in being able to secure the key ingredients that power the technologies that are being developed or will be developed and scaled at the park. Harley Johnson (26:40.719) Yeah, that's a great question. it is definitely the case that PsiQuantum and some other companies are focusing their efforts on building their systems using existing fabrication platforms. And so they're trying to base them on existing materials. have them fabricated in existing facilities. Some of the quantum computing modalities are more suited to that than others. Generally speaking, at the chip level, the quantum computing platforms require a broader range of materials than the conventional silicon, what we call CMOS-based you know, chip designs. And, you know, that one of the things that that one the issues that that creates is that you have relatively small volume production of more specialized materials and architectures, which is not economically very scalable, you know, with existing fab facilities. And so the industry faces some bottlenecks there, like in supporting scale-up of quantum systems that do require different materials and different designs. Having said that, there's a big advantage in a design that is scalable with existing fabrication technology, because you don't have to go out and build totally new tools. But you do have to find a foundry or a fab that can Khullani Abdullahi (28:33.688) build up. Harley Johnson (28:33.849) that can do business with you. And so we're thinking about those needs and thinking about what role state of Illinois, city of Chicago, and the larger Midwest can play in that supply chain. There are other needs too sort of on the back end, I on the assembly and the packaging that's required to put all the pieces together. And some of those needs are even more specialized for quantum systems than than they are for classical systems. there again, we're thinking about what parts of that process can we contribute to and provide infrastructure for. That is definitely on the horizon as a challenge for the industry. we're not the only ones thinking about it. There are other places thinking about it as well. And every company, every quantum company that wants to scale up has got to sort of factor that into their plans as well. Khullani Abdullahi (29:35.468) I recently attended the Trump administration's manufacturing tour that they're doing across different states to get a sense of what needs American states have for reshoring manufacturing in critical industries. And something that I thought was interesting in kind of the feedback that they were giving is that I think this is one area of bipartisanship that exists, which is reducing supply, increasing supply chain resilience, reducing supply chain shocks, especially for critical industries. And I imagine that quantum is considered. So it'd be interesting to see what it would mean to onshore and particularly in Illinois, some of the key components of the supply chain early and often and invest in some of those companies that then operate as feeders for some of the fundamental pieces that go in. I think that could be, I think that's a great opportunity companies that haven't even emerged yet, right? That haven't been built yet. So that's exciting. And I'm sure they'll be able to turn to you guys for help figuring out what is needed. One area that I think that I hear a lot about in the AI space is this circular feedback loop where quantum computing Harley Johnson (30:38.554) Right. Right. Khullani Abdullahi (30:59.97) being able to solve problems, being able to train models on quantum computers that are current, AI model development currently is constrained by computing, right? And there's only a certain rate at which classical computers can help develop these new algorithms and train these new models. And we're already seeing the compute race in AI hit some barriers. So there's a lot of like thinking about Harley Johnson (31:12.197) Mm-hmm. Khullani Abdullahi (31:27.704) When quantum computing can train models, when models can be trained on these quantum processing units, do you anticipate that that feedback loop just kind of accelerates? Because I imagine that current quantum computing companies are using AI to refine their algorithms. don't know if they're, are they using it to help design hardware to solve faults in quantum? Like, you still seeing that on the ground already? And what does that look like? Harley Johnson (31:57.687) Yeah, right. So I think you said it well. The way I think of it too is that AI will help quantum and quantum will help AI. I mean, I think that's sort of the feedback that you're describing. And so AI is important for the example you gave was error correction and fault tolerance. That's one. I mean, just sort of more generally building and discovering new algorithms. or mapping algorithms onto the hardware, which is kind of the way to think about the capacity of quantum computers to run new kinds of algorithms. We have to figure out how to encode those algorithms into the hardware itself. And that's a very complicated thing, and AI is helping to facilitate that. So that's a way in which AI is helping. quantum computing. Going in the other direction, you've heard to this also, but using quantum computers to generate training data for AI models, machine learning models in particular. That's something that a lot of people are very excited about. a simple example there is if you're solving problems in you know, materials discovery or drug discovery, where you are trying to search for molecules with certain properties. One of the things that one needs to be able to do is to train models with very highly accurate data on the fundamental pieces of those chemical processes. And that very highly accurate data is something that we're optimistic will be attainable with quantum computing. So these are relatively small problems that have to be solved very accurately with sort of quantum level accuracy. If one can solve those many small problems on quantum computers with really, really high accuracy, then you generate training data that can be used with classical algorithms. So that's a case where there is some quantum algorithm development, but kind of already know how to do that kind of stuff. Harley Johnson (34:24.252) What you're really doing is generating the data and then turning that over to the classical AI algorithms. And we think that will become a huge application space. Khullani Abdullahi (34:31.342) Yeah. So that would have been data that they couldn't generate otherwise. Harley Johnson (34:39.578) Or at least not with that level of accuracy. Yeah. Yeah. Khullani Abdullahi (34:41.814) Right. Interesting. So in the AI space, when we're thinking about key use cases that have emerged that are on the malevolent concerning side, AI has increased offensive cybersecurity capabilities for bad actors of every kind. Nation states all the way to your hacker hiding in someone's basement. It is often said in the public, think what's risen to the public salience when it comes to quantum is that the scale up of quantum computing will end modern cryptography as we know it. And that everything that has ever been encrypted will now be, there will be an open door policy on it. So when we think about high leverage AI use cases for quantum progress, and we think about offensive AI cybersecurity cases, and then we have quantum computing destroying cryptography. Where is this? What is the likelihood? Is that accurate? that what has risen to public salience correct? If it is correct, how should we be thinking about quantum's role in cryptography and cybersecurity? And is there opportunities for companies in the cybersecurity realm to partner at IQMP, even if they're not a quantum native company. And I would love to hear your thoughts about even that use case or other AI quantum cybersecurity use cases. Harley Johnson (36:23.11) So the application that we're thinking about here is, in some kind of simple sense, is sort of the ability to crack codes, or to de-encrypt information. And while some of the other applications we were talking about, it's unclear whether quantum will discover the right algorithms to solve these problems. We already have the algorithms to to solve the classic encryption problem. We already know how to use quantum computers to do that. What's stopping us from being able to do that now is that the quantum computers we have are not yet big enough to solve that encryption problem. But what we know, theoretically, is that when the quantum computers get big enough, we will definitely be able to solve that encryption problem. And so that's what I think is motivating the conversation about post-quantum cryptography and the ability to... Sorry. Khullani Abdullahi (37:24.782) Wow, the algorithms already exist to break modern cryptography. Do we have the algorithm to defend it or replace it? Harley Johnson (37:32.785) They do. Harley Johnson (37:36.516) Well, mean, it's the way that the experts I talked to who focus on this particular area sort of theory of quantum information, the way they would say this is that in studying the kinds of algorithms that we know will break the encryption if we have a big enough system, this is how we will develop new security measures, right? So I... I trust them and that when they tell me that, there are a lot of experts working on that problem. But what we do know for sure is that lots of organizations, lots of nation states are working on getting quantum computers big enough to tackle that encryption problem. so we need to be leaning into that ourselves. Khullani Abdullahi (38:24.013) Yeah. Harley Johnson (38:33.627) to sort of get us to that same capability as quickly as possible. And along the way, figure out ways to keep our information safe. And a lot of smart people are thinking about that. the federal government has, of course, rolled out guidance for post-quantum cryptography. That's been an active conversation for the last couple of years. But when we talk about reasons to invest and to push toward more powerful quantum computers. It is not just about economic prosperity, it's national security, it's economic security as well. Khullani Abdullahi (39:17.582) I think that's such an excellent point, especially because we have a lot of export policies associated with the AI stack. And we're very clear about its national security implications. We have conversations and policies around the need to win in AI. I'm not sure that it's at least maybe not in the public's imagination. The need to win quantum has just a serious national security implications, especially because many, years ago in the cybersecurity space, there were reports about China and I'm sure other countries taking every, all of the data that had ever been hacked that was still encrypted and storing it for the day that they could turn on their quantum decryption keys and get this intelligence asymmetry, right? From all of the things that they'd hacked. So. I think it's an excellent point that the national security implications of quantum are just as important as the national security implications of artificial intelligence. I want to shift gears a little bit and think a little bit about kind of the pillars of Illinois' quantum strategy as you see it, right? We have hardware, we have facilities, we've talked about algorithms, commercialization. Where does the workforce element come from, right? Do you have, I imagine, deep relationships with universities? Are you giving them guidance on the degrees of the future, the training and education of the future that will be relevant? What does a quantum-ready workforce look like 15 years from now when all of this is scaled up? What would it mean? Today people have AI in their resumes and their job descriptions, et cetera. What would it mean to be a member of the quantum workforce in Illinois? Harley Johnson (41:11.533) Right. Well, we, in some sense, I sort of speak in first person here, we are the universities, like the organization that's running the quantum park is the research universities among other organizations. And I'm an educator, know, lifelong educator. We, you know, include in that in that group of organizations, you know, in addition to UIUC, it's it's University of Chicago and Northwestern, but also It's the community college system at City Colleges of Chicago. It's CSU, Minority Serving Institution on the South Side. And so we have, we're all, all of these, it's UIC, all these organizations and institutions are part of our governance and we're all working together. And I think it's important because it, you know, I think you're sort of maybe, Khullani Abdullahi (42:01.367) Excellent. Harley Johnson (42:08.324) suggesting this, it's correct to say that it's not just PhDs that are going to be in the workforce in quantum. It's not just experimental physics PhDs. There have been some really interesting studies that have been published over last few years, including one that our partners at Chicago Quantum Exchange have shared pretty broadly about. the fact that the future quantum industry, most of the jobs will require a bachelor's degree or less when you factor in all the technicians that will be needed, all of the, even there'll be programmers needed, there'll be trades and so on. So it's not just gonna be coming out of PhD programs at the research intensive kind of R1 universities. So we are building programs actively and consulting with, I should say, not just the institutions of higher education, but K through 12 programs around the city and around the state of Illinois. But there's some great examples that are coming out of that now. So City Colleges is working on an apprenticeship model that will support some of the activities at IQMP. Chicago State University just announced recently that it will be possible for students at CSU to get minors in quantum and certificates in quantum, the first such program in the state. And so that's very exciting. And then working at the K through 12 level, we're sponsoring extracurricular programs for kids to learn about quantum. think the way I think of it is, you've got sort of 15 year horizon. Khullani Abdullahi (44:04.951) Right. Harley Johnson (44:05.559) and it is predicted that there'll be tens of thousands of new jobs because of the quantum computing industry in this region. The people who are going to fill those jobs are probably in middle school right now. So we need to reach them at this stage and then have the whole pipeline of programs ready when they're ready for them. Khullani Abdullahi (44:28.878) Excellent. one thing that I like to ask the people, my guests who join me is to ask things that other similarly situated leaders might learn from. I imagine there's a quantum leader in Michigan or Wisconsin who's going to listen to this podcast and think about how you helped lead Illinois's quantum strategy. What is a lesson that has surprised you as we've gone for over the last decade from those early quantum grants to where you are now. And what would you maybe do differently based on the lessons learned? Especially coming from academia, I imagine they just pulled you right out of the classroom in your research lab and said, here, Harley, here's half a billion dollars. Go make this a reality. What are some lessons there that you could share with other quantum leaders who may be tasked with leading this for their own states? Harley Johnson (45:37.018) Yeah, yeah. So that's a great question. Well, so hi to all of the other similarly situated leaders. It's nice to see you. I actually know most of many of you. And we do talk. I mean, one of the things that we have that we're very fortunate to have here is really visionary leadership at the highest levels in our government. And that is, you know, that Khullani Abdullahi (45:50.594) Good. Harley Johnson (46:06.747) that turns into conviction and investment that is just necessary. You just have to have the investment and you have to have the support from the leadership. I think so that that's a of like a necessary ingredient for sure. One of the things that I've been really surprised about and pleased with is to see how in our case there are There's a lot of value in deep partnerships with the community. so we have in our ecosystem, I think of it as our secret weapon or magic ingredient or something like that, this whole dimension of trying to focus on economic opportunity and economic development. You mentioned, think, briefly at the top that the location of our park, it's at a former steel mill site on the south side of Chicago. you know, in a part of the city that's been historically under invested, least certainly since steel mills closed in the, in the nineties and, having the support of the community and, the, the local elected officials in doing something kind of transformative has given us kind of a superpower, I would say. And, know, people are still coming to understand what it is that we're up to and what are we doing? How can they participate and is this something that to be worried about or excited about? People are still sorting those things out, but the more support we have from the community, the more we're able to do. And that has been a dimension that I didn't expect to see. And I think other ecosystems, to the extent that they're able to connect their activities to kind of creating public good, that's... Khullani Abdullahi (47:48.695) Right. Khullani Abdullahi (48:03.394) Right. Harley Johnson (48:04.437) really huge. think that's really an important part of it. And I think I just more generally, think what what we are fortunate to have is alignment. And so I mentioned that the leadership and the kind of the vision and the kind of the community buy in. But everything in between, you know, to the extent that you can be aligned with, you know, the economic development mission and you can be aligned with science and you can be aligned with. the goals of the federal government and so on. That's how you can, I think, get these big things done. So we want to maintain the alignment and I think other regions, other ecosystems, and not just in quantum, but in other areas of deep tech, achieving that alignment is probably the most important thing. Khullani Abdullahi (48:52.826) Excellent. Thank you for sharing that because I think it's helpful for people to help orient themselves around what are all of the moving pieces that are necessary to launch something like this. One final question as we wrap up, what are your thoughts on, are you going to see this through? This feels like a 50 year initiative. I imagine you still like to do research in some also some teaching as you kind of think through the next phase of your career. Is this going to be your swan song? Harley Johnson (49:29.934) That's a good question. Well, luckily, I'm only 15 years old, so I've got a long time. So, you know, this we're building, we are trying to build an institution that will last a long time. you know, these things don't grow up overnight. And, you know, we will be in growth mode for a long time. know, as a as. Khullani Abdullahi (49:35.566) You Harley Johnson (49:55.994) I will say that as an academic, you always imagine your academic work having broad impact and translational impact out to society. We say that all the time, like, this paper I'm writing is going to have positive impact on society. And in some cases, you can see that happen. But in a lot of cases, you're removed from that kind of impact on society. So to be able to work with a team of Khullani Abdullahi (50:04.066) Yeah. Khullani Abdullahi (50:11.277) Yes. Harley Johnson (50:25.85) people, some of whom are other academics and scientists, and see the possibility of really directly creating public good is really gratifying and it's pretty, it's almost intoxicating. You just want to double down on your effort and push to reach scale even faster. Yeah, it's really a privilege to get to do that. Khullani Abdullahi (50:57.3) Excellent. I'm going to hold you to that and remind you of how much you love it if you ever decide and try to leave us, Thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time to make quantum accessible, helping to introduce IQMP to the broader community in Chicago, especially those of us who are thinking about AI. I think you've given us some great insight into how we should start thinking about quantum upstream and not waiting 15 years. I also really loved that the point about starting to meet our middle schoolers where they are to kind of develop this future pipeline. So all really exciting things. Thank you so much. Any final thoughts? Harley Johnson (51:37.88) Well, thank you for helping us tell the story. And we're excited about connecting to all of the AI experts in your community, because I think we all stand to benefit by working together. Khullani Abdullahi (51:52.246) Excellent. Thank you so much. Harley Johnson (51:54.051) Yeah.