It is crucial that the world prioritizes investments in quantum applications that actively support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Together with industry, this Project maps and promotes new quantum UN SDG-use cases and anticipates the societal impact of novel, state of the art quantum applications including quantum-AI hybrids across a wide range of fields, actively steering towards societal beneficial outcomes. The Project collaborates with leading companies from the United States and Europe currently developing and manufacturing real-world quantum software and hardware structures. It explores near future quantum empowered systems, products, and services per quantum domain (e.g., computing & simulation, sensing & metrology, networking & communication, materials & devices), beyond documented use cases, actively connecting such novel 2G QT capabilities to socially conscious projects and optimization problems that benefit from quantum advantage. While safeguarding, engaging, and advancing QT, society, and humankind, the overarching objective of quantum related public and private investment and funding schemes should be to support R&D programs that focus on pressing societal goals and prioritize them.

Counterbalancing investments in QT R&D for military and commercial purposes, this Project intends to foster sustainable quantum innovation for the social good, by raising widespread awareness in academia, policy, and industry, about the importance of directing funds towards co-creating societal beneficial quantum driven applications. Along the lines of the SEA framework for Responsible Quantum Innovation: either as a matter of design choices or envisioned use cases. Trusted and certified responsible quantum technology (RQT) ‘Made in USA’ has competitive, legal compliance, and quantum enablement advantages for its champions, as trust facilitates adoption. In addition, the Project seeks to forge partnerships with institutions that share a similar vision and mission-oriented approach.

Examples of Quantum UN SDG-Use Cases that encourage the full stack of QT applications for desirable social goals are myriad and come with great business opportunities. Quantum UN SDG Use Cases include novo drug discovery and personalized medicine, design & development, simulating the human body on an individual, group, or community level, hospital, clinical trial and nurse & surgery scheduling, medical imaging, precision laser therapy, protein synthesis, applying quantum simulation to chemistry for battery design, carbon capture, alternative energy discovery and development, powerplant logistics & optimization, quantum sensing for microchip fabrication, seismic imaging and prediction. Quantum SDG Use Cases further include: using QT to lower the cost of advanced computer access for the world’s poorest countries, equitable access to quantum cloud computing (QcaaS) and the imminent quantum internet, secure data & communication, synchronized atomic clocks, blind quantum computing, resource optimization, water management, 21-day weather forecasting, quantum enhanced navigation, and novel fertilizers to improve agriculture, sustainable foods, quantum simulation for economic policy (e.g. testing proposed policy interventions by combining causal inference in macroeconomics and q-simulation of regional and global systems to prevent counterproductive policy effects) industrial catalysts, cleantech, and climate modeling.

As the inventory of Quantum SDG Use cases rapidly expands, this Project page will be updated.