Officials from the National Research Council (NRC), including its president, Pierre Coulombe, visited campus yesterday to sign a memorandum of agreement.
This was to recognize a strategic research partnership between NRC, through its Institute for Microstructural Sciences, and the University of Waterloo, through its Institute for Quantum Computing (QC).
"An informal collaboration between NRC-IMS and researchers at Waterloo's Institute for Quantum Computing already exists and will develop further under the umbrella of a Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Innovation platform known as QuantumWorks," says Brandon Sweet of Waterloo's government relations office, explaining the event.
The signing of this memorandum of understanding will solidify the partnership and form a strategic research partnership in the general field of Quantum Information and thus establish a very strong position for Canada both in research on Quantum Computing/Information and in securing downstream benefits.
The agreement's scope identifies areas of common interest between NRC-IMS and IQC that will form the basis for collaborative programs for which agreements will be developed on a case by case basis. These include Nano-Photonics and Nano-Electronics, solid state and photonic quantum devices, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) experiments and mathematical algorithms.
The two-year agreement, with a provision for renewal, calls for joint research projects on topics of mutual interest, giving researchers from both organizations an opportunity to work outside their own organization; recruitment and training programs to let the organizations collaborate in the placement of post-doctoral fellows; and arrangements for the organizations to share equipment and services.
Coulombe, NRC vice-president Richard Normandin, and Marie D'Iorio, who heads the Institute for Microstructural Sciences, began their campus visit just in time for lunch with president David Johnston. Afterwards, representatives of the two agencies and Waterloo officials signed the memorandum of agreement in Johnston's office.
"An informal discussions followed the ceremony," says Sweet, "after which the NRC visitors headed for IQC's offices and lab space for a 90-minute tour led by David Fransen, executive director, and Ray Laflamme, scientific director."