OSP Deadline, if nominated: March 6, 2024. Departments or areas may require additional time for proposal review and submission. Please discuss a timeline with your grants administrator.

The DOE Office of Science (SC) program in Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) announced its interest in receiving applications that advance the field of quantum computing by developing enabling end-to-end software infrastructures. This announcement solicits applications from large cross-disciplinary teams that will advance computer science toward a software stack that is ready to leverage multiple quantum technologies, or will develop mathematical foundations, algorithms, and software tools toward quantum utility demonstration for applications within the DOE mission.

This announcement targets several priority research directions: end-to-end software toolchains to program and control quantum systems and networks at scale, quantum algorithms delivering quantum advantage, and resilience through error detection, prevention, protection, mitigation, and correction. These are key components for the development of a software ecosystem that must be ready to account for modularity and interoperability on one side and for specialization and performance on another. Research proposed in response to this announcement must primarily focus on addressing one of the two topics described below:

Topic 1. Modular Software Stack: The diversity of quantum computing architectures and hardware technologies is expected to persist into the foreseeable future; this is an important consideration that guides the advancement of computer science sought in this topic. The development of an integrated computational ecosystem requires a general-purpose quantum software stack that is adaptable to, and takes advantage of, multiple kinds of quantum hardware. The DOE seeks basic research in computer science and applied mathematics that:

Addresses practical and fundamental bottlenecks that hinder modularity and potential synergy among selected hardware technologies;
Pursues general approaches to integration that may remain relevant for future technologies;
Devises ways to embed quantum processors in parallel and distributed computing models; and
Integrates error management across the software stack.

Topic 2. Quantum Utility: This topic aims to advance the research towards the achievement and demonstration of quantum utility by developing new algorithms and fine-tuning all levels of the software stack for a selected portfolio of promising problems within the ASCR mission. Applications should:

Choose generalizable application-inspired target problems;
Develop algorithms for optimized math kernels and math primitives for selected current (NISQ) and future quantum systems that significantly advance state-of-the-art performance for the selected target problems;
Adapt, if needed, any level of the software stack for the specific target problems; and
Estimate quantum resources by employing important complementary metrics, including energy-to-solution.

Verification protocols and tools are important for both Topic 1 and Topic 2 and should be discussed in the application. Applicants must choose and specify Topic 1 or Topic 2 as the focus of their application. In the choice of Topic 1 or 2, proposed research is encouraged to consider multiple metrics, such as qubit count, gate fidelity, and qubit connectivity.

This is a limited submission opportunity and Harvard, as a single institution, is limited to submitting up to three Pre-Applications (required), and if encouraged, up to three full proposals. The Office of the Vice Provost for Research will conduct an internal competition to select Harvard’s nominees. To be considered for a Harvard nomination, potential applicants must submit an internal pre-proposal by 10:00 AM on February 20, 2024, via the link above. Please note that there is no limitation to Harvard appearing in an application when not the lead.

Requests for support related to the application portal may be directed to vpr@harvard.edu.