Google Offers Universities $100K Grants for Fault-Tolerant Quantum Work

Google is putting money behind two problems slowing quantum computing, and it wants university researchers to take them on. The company opened two funding calls under its Academic Research Awards program, one for algorithms that could do useful work on the first fault-tolerant machines, the other for defending quantum systems against attack. Awards generally run up to $100,000. Applications close August 7 and decisions are due by October 30.

Algorithms for the early fault-tolerant era

The first call targets what Google calls the early fault-tolerant period, when machines will have only a handful of high-quality logical qubits rather than the thousands or millions needed for large-scale computing. Fault tolerance means using error correction to protect fragile quantum information, encoding it across groups of physical qubits to build more reliable logical ones. Google wants algorithms that stay useful within those tight limits.

The company is asking for three kinds of work: new algorithms built for small fault-tolerant hardware, ways to map real problems in areas like drug discovery, climate, and materials onto them, and methods to cut the resource cost through better compilation and error correction. It also wants hard numbers. Proposals should estimate logical qubit counts, gate depths, and error-correction overhead, and explain why a classical computer couldn’t solve the same problem efficiently.

Securing the machine itself

The second call approaches quantum security from a less common angle. Instead of asking how future quantum computers might break encryption, Google wants to protect the quantum computers. Its focus is the seam between classical and quantum hardware, where ordinary computers compile programs and generate the pulses that control qubits.

Meanwhile, suggested topics include verifying that control pulses match the gates written in software, guarding against side-channel attacks that read microwave emissions to reconstruct proprietary algorithms, and keeping cloud users isolated as providers share hardware among more of them.

The awards go to professors at degree-granting institutions worldwide as unrestricted gifts rather than contracts. Google will judge proposals on scientific merit and alignment with its responsible AI principles.