The next leap won’t come from AI – it’ll come from quantum tech: expert calls for national institute in quantum device engineering.
Monash University Media Release
As the Government accelerates its economic reform agenda, with a focus on productivity and harnessing data and digital technology, investing in quantum-enabling technologies stands out as a smart move, writes Professor Malin Premaratne in Monash Lens.
According to Professor Premaratne, Australia has the opportunity to become a leader in quantum device technology – not just quantum computing – as it works to secure its technological future by strengthening local manufacturing and sovereign capability.
“The real quantum revolution won’t come from algorithms alone – it’ll come from devices small enough to hold in your hand, but powerful enough to change the world.
“While quantum computing dominates headlines, many of the most impactful quantum technologies are already here – quietly powering medical diagnostics, energy innovations, and next-generation electronics.
“Quantum sensors can now detect early-stage cancers through molecular vibrations, and new photovoltaic materials can generate electricity even at night by harvesting ambient heat. These are not concepts – they’re working devices, built on real quantum principles.
“Our team at Monash is actively advancing the materials and systems behind these breakthroughs, including work on quantum thermal transistors and quantum-enhanced detectors for biological imaging.
“If Australia wants to be competitive in the global quantum race, building a skilled workforce is essential – one that can design, build and commercialise quantum systems. That means developing deep expertise in nanofabrication, optics and materials science.”
Monash University’s expertise in quantum device technology
Monash University stands at the forefront of quantum device research, pioneering groundbreaking theoretical and experimental advancements over two decades of multidisciplinary innovation. Its extensive collaborations span prestigious global institutions such as NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech, Oxford University, and Australian universities, bringing together expertise from the faculties of science, engineering, medicine, and IT.
Leveraging state-of-the-art facilities – including the Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication, High-Performance Computing (HPC) cluster and Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy – Monash researchers are spearheading breakthroughs in quantum energy sources including spasers and lasers, advanced metamaterials, and next-generation sensing and transistor technologies. Specialised research groups, such as the Advanced Computing and Simulation Laboratory (AXL), Quantum Information Science Group (MonQIS), Monash Centre for Atomically Thin Materials (MCATM), Quantum Devices Research (QDR) Consortium, and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies (FLEET), are driving transformative innovations, including nanoscale lasers, quantum thermal transistors, atomically thin plasmonic materials (plasmene sheets), quantum communications, and cutting-edge wearable quantum sensors.
This quantum device research capability, combined with world-leading materials engineering expertise, positions Monash University to significantly elevate Australia’s global standing in materials science and quantum technologies.
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WTF does any of this mean? Barry Jones please explain.
Only a deep understanding of quantum tech. may allow us to develop a chance of an opening to begin the commencement of some idea of the deep understanding to be had, possibly, of quantum tech. I’m holding my breath…errggh, gasp…
Richard Feynman: “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics,” and “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense.”
Niels Bohr: “If you aren’t confused by quantum mechanics, you haven’t really understood it,” and “Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.”
Blake Crouch: “The more you study quantum mechanics, the more crazy and incomprehensible it becomes. You truly do need a Ph.D. in very high level math and science to understand it at a high, high level.”
I’ve been reading about quantum mechanics for years, along with watching docos and teaching videos on the topic. I don’t know why… I haven’t learnt much but it’s an enjoyable way to kill time.
It’s a great example of the under-developed concept of history that most are sure of. In the reach of history, we only go back to bits found that remain, and compare by going back and forth between now and then, tossing around arguments and language, until we announce it as history (maybe for the time being), and knowledge. Thus, the nature and meaning of existence is circumscribed.
Right now, T-Rump’s masters and flunkies are madly trying to eliminate history as well as all the sciences that surround it, in their bid to control the world – they’ve got Buckley’s chance, the vast majority of people know and like science – it’s now embedded in their dreams. All they’ll achieve is the obliteration of America and all the connections to it.
The quantum world is not new, it has always existed, but it wasn’t known until scientists and mathematicians named it. So of course a history will be assigned to it, but that’s where the problems of scope might start.
Finding the beginning, middle and end of the quantum world is antithetical to the quantum ‘reality’, where time can flow in ‘opposite’ or ‘any’ direction.
It seems that the Australian First Nations folk’s deep (spiritual) reality is, in western language, that the ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’ are all one, and always with us. Such concept is also replete in Indic philosophy, and the ‘yin yang’ in China – refer to Capra, Heisenberg, Bohr et al.
Who’d a thunk it? It seems to say something about being and existence.
Good points Clakka, and your points expose the weakness of the Western Enlightenment of which we are so proud.
We glorify the Enlightenment’s establishment of Reason as the guiding light for progress and ethical living, but Reason was based on what we could see and touch and measure.
This approach led to great advances at the material level, but was destructive of wisdom at the moral and ethical level.
Trump, like liberalism itself, is a product of Enlightenment thinking.
One day Trump will no longer be a problem, but we’ll still be stuck with Enlightenment thinking.