Why Quantum Engineering Is Rising as a Distinct Industrial Sector

Why build an industry around a scale that cuts across established verticals? This question occurred to me on a long flight to Paris, to attend the opening ceremony of the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), at UNESCO headquarters last month. I was part of an IEEE delegation led by 2025 IEEE President Kathleen Kramer. The event celebrated the 100th anniversary of several seminal quantum-science publications, including Wolfgang Pauli’s paper on his exclusion principle; Werner Heisenberg’s “Quantum-theoretical Re-interpretation of Kinematic and Mechanical Relations,” the first mathematically consistent formulation of quantum mechanics; and Max Born’s and Pascual Jordan’s treatise on matrix mechanics in “On Quantum Mechanics.”

That Paris event made me realize that quantum engineering has evolved very differently from, say, nanotechnology. In the early 2000s, governments around the world launched initiatives to nurture the nascent field of nanotechnology. Fast-forward two decades and nanotechnology has essentially been absorbed into verticals like semiconductors, advanced materials, and drug delivery. Like Bill Joy’s infamous gray gooa silo-busting “nanotechnology industry” never materialized.

The quantum regime, however, is already its own thriving industry, perhaps because the science of it is so unique. Quantum engineering involves math and phenomena that are fundamentally different from the classical physics engineers have so successfully exploited up to now. And many quantum technologies are aimed at doing things that otherwise couldn’t be done at all. For instance, quantum cryptography is a completely different way of encrypting messages that uses quantum entanglement, which has no classical analogue.

As Contributing Editor Edd Gent reports in “The Future of Quantum Computing Is Modular,” companies like Xanadu, IONQ, IBMand Welinq are scaling up quantum computers to tackle real-world problems that challenge conventional computers, like factoring large numbers and modeling the weather. Their approaches differ, but their goals are similar: to connect quantum processors in the same computer, data center, and among remote locations.

And then there are the quantum sensors based on defects in diamonds that Quantum Catalyzer is trying to commercialize. As CEO Amanda Stein tells IEEE Spectrum Associate Editor Dina Genkina in “5 Questions,” those sensors could be used in extreme environments to “detect magnetic fields, temperature, pressure, potentially even gravity.”

Regardless of their operating environment, all quantum tech must be fabricated in facilities that maintain exquisite control of temperature, vibration, and electromagnetic effects, and they are staffed by multidisciplinary teams of quantum engineers and electrical engineers. The skill sets that quantum employers seek go well beyond traditional EE training. While many EEs have a basic understanding of quantum mechanics, the quantum engineers I talked to in Paris were adamant that EEs looking to make a quantum leap, as it were, need to understand quantum mechanics at a deep level. It doesn’t hurt to also be familiar with superconductivity or be handy with laser control systems.

According to IEEE Life Member Hausi A. Müllerprofessor of computer science at the University of Victoria, B.C., and chair of the IEEE Quantum Technical Community, the need for EEs with quantum chops will likely grow at an accelerated pace in the near term, as funding from governments seeking a quantum advantage in cryptography pours into startups and established companies alike.

Whether you’re already deep in the weeds or just quantum-curious, you can seek out opportunities for learning and networking with the world’s top quantum engineers and scientists at this year’s IEEE Quantum Week31 August to 5 September in Albuquerque.

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