The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in collaboration with Amazon on January 19, 2021 announced the establishment of a Quantum Computing Applications Lab in India. MeitY, in collaboration with the Amazon Web Services (AWS) will set to accelerate quantum computing-led research and development and enable new scientific discoveries.

MeitY said the Quantum Computing Applications Lab will allow the government departments, researchers, scientist, academia and developers to enable advanced industries in the areas of manufacture, healthcare, agriculture and aerospace engineering to offer quantum computing as an operation. AWS will assist the laboratory in terms of technological and programming.

The Government officials said that the Quantum Computing Applications Lab will operate in collaboration with subject matter experts from the government sector for defining the problem statements and state them in public, inviting applications from researchers, academia, and organizations to address them. This will provide select applicants the access to quantum computing hardware, simulators, and programming tools, on-demand and at no cost with Amazon Braket for enablement of scientists and developers for developing algorithms, and conducting advanced simulations and experiment completion.

For public details, Amazon Braket provides a development environment for enablement of users to explore and design quantum algorithms, test, and troubleshoot them on simulated quantum computers, and run them on different quantum hardware technologies.

Ajay Sawhney, the secretary of MeitY, said, “Today, we are delighted to take another significant step in India’s science and technology journey with the establishment of the MeitY Quantum Computing Applications Lab with the support of AWS.”

The vice president of international sales – Worldwide Public Sector – Amazon Web Services, Max Peterson said, “We congratulate MeitY for its visionary leadership as it empowers the scientific community in India...By supporting the MeitY Quantum Computing Applications Lab, we aim to make quantum computing available to more scientists, researchers, developers and organisations, enabling them to access and experiment with the technology, and explore the practical applications of quantum algorithms.”