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Op/ed: ‘An Industry That Will Change the World’

Pines: UMD to Play Important Role in Fulfilling Quantum’s Revolutionary Promise

By Darryll J. Pines

UMD contingent joining IonQ officials at the New York Stock Exchange

The UMD contingent joining IonQ officials at the New York Stock Exchange Friday for the ceremonial opening bell-ringing included Vice President for Legal Affairs and General Counsel Mike Poterala (left), President Darryll J. Pines, College Park Professor of physics and IonQ co-founder and chief scientist Chris Monroe and Chief Strategy Officer for Economic Development Ken Ulman.

Quantum science and technology just made a major stride in a century-long journey from the notebooks and experiments of scientific luminaries like Einstein to its position today—poised to deliver once-impossible solutions to a range of pressing societal problems, University of Maryland President Darryll J. Pines writes in a new op/ed in The Baltimore Sun.

IonQ, a company founded in part on UMD technology and based in its Discovery District, became the first purely quantum-focused company on the New York Stock exchange, cementing UMD’s place at the center of what Pines calls the DMV: “the Capital of Quantum”—a potential ground zero for the next world-changing technological upheaval of the sort that began in Silicon Valley in the 1970s.

Friday morning, I traveled to New York City to witness IonQ—the revolutionary startup born out of research at the University of Maryland, where I am president—become the first publicly traded pure-play hardware and software company in the quantum computing space.

As I prepared to stand alongside IonQ’s founders and leaders to ring the ceremonial bell, I was struck by a heavy realization: It’s here—the quantum revolution I’ve been preparing for, talking about incessantly, and working tirelessly to champion has arrived.

Think about personalized medicine—not just a vaccine, but a vaccine designed just for you. Think about climate change and having the computational power to actually tackle it and reverse the damage we humans have caused to our planet. Quantum makes it ever-so-much-more possible. It’s going to be a game-changer for the entire Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia (DMV) area.

Read the rest in The Baltimore Sun.

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