IFMIF-DONES participated in a summit on quantum computing organised by the Chamber of Commerce of Granada on March 22. The event gathered leaders in the field of research, as well as thirty companies and entities from the province with the company IBM.

The summit, organised in three independent meetings, kicked off with a meeting attended by Enrique Herrera, Vice-Rector for Research and Knowledge Transfer, the Rector’s Delegate for the Digital University, María Begoña del Pino, the Director of the OTRI, Carlos Sampedro and the Coordinator of the Technical Office of IFMIF-DONES, José Aguilar.

Aguilar highlighted the role that companies such as IBM can play in a project like IFMIF-DONES, companies that are leaders in their fields in the world of engineering and science, as they can “provide value in terms of covering the future storage needs that we will have throughout the life of the project, both for the construction phase and for the operation, maintenance and scientific exploitation phase of the facility. At the same time, it is also of interest to have access to supercomputing capabilities, which could potentially have technical applications within the project, such as the possibility of accessing intensive thermo-mechanical calculations, neutronics in realistic models of the plant and the implementation of models associated with the idea of the digital twin, with the possibility of carrying out simulations in real time”.

Quantum computing is certainly the technology of the future and the one that will play a leading role in many of the challenges that Granada wants to tackle in its aim to become an international benchmark in bio-health research, science linked to energy and new materials or artificial intelligence. “Granada also wants to play a leading role in quantum technology,” concluded Herrera, Vice-Rector for Research and Transfer of the UGR, after the meeting.

Thirty companies, entities and institutions from the province participated in the summit, held in the Chamber of Commerce of Granada and organised by this institution, the University, the PTS, AImpulsa and Círculo Tecnológico, with the participation of five international executives from IBM, manufacturer of what is currently considered to be the most powerful quantum computer.