Colorado’s quantum Tech Hub partners with IBM to train 3,500 workers 

A Colorado quantum technology consortium backed by a $40.5 million federal grant doesn’t plan to spend a dime on its next workforce development program. Instead, Elevate Quantum has partnered with IBM to roll out the company’s curriculum to local colleges and universities. They’ve set a goal to train 3,500 workers in quantum-related careers by 2030 —  no Ph.D. required. 

“With quantum, the idea is this is a tool for computational science,” said Bradley Holt, IBM’s lead for workforce development partnerships and who is on Elevate’s workforce advisory board. “This is a tool for exploring scientific problems in many different domains. We don’t want to limit ourselves to just computer science, to just physics. It really is about getting outside the physics department.”

Such partnerships were part of the intent behind the nation’s Tech Hubs, a Biden-era program that came out of bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. The grass roots effort to unify state officials, educators, local quantum companies, investors and entrepreneurs as the Elevate Quantum consortium was named one of 31 U.S. Tech Hubs a year later. The designation came with meager funding, but the idea was to accelerate the commercialization of technology across America by getting the local community to build it. 

In phase two, grants were offered to help build out the ecosystem and Elevate Quantum received $40.5 million in July. But not all Tech Hubs have similarly benefited. Six in other states were awarded grants in January just before President Donald Trump took office, but had their funding rescinded two weeks ago, as federal officials called the process “rushed.” 

The team at Elevate Quantum has moved forward cautiously this year, hopeful that people with quantum backgrounds picked by Trump to lead federal departments showed the president’s support of the technology. And being able to tap existing resources like IBM’s training program at no cost is also part of Elevate’s effort to be mindful of taxpayer funding.

“Bradley’s part of our advisory board,” said Jessi Olsen, Elevate’s chief operating officer. “When we were going into our first meeting and asking what are some of the things that we want to accelerate? He said, ‘Look, I’ve got all these free training programs. Let’s figure out how to start pushing that out, getting it into AP courses in the 11th and 12th grades, community colleges and our typical universities.’” 

The six Tech Hubs that lost $210 million in grants this month included programs in Alabama, Oregon, Missouri, Maine, Vermont and a two-state effort from Washington-Idaho. 

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, a Trump appointee, said in a statement that the competition will be reopened to those six, as well as 13 others that haven’t yet received any federal grant money to build out their tech ecosystems, which include communities focusing on biotech, renewable energy, mass timber and more. 

Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the nonprofit think tank Brookings Institution who has followed the Tech Hubs investment since the start, felt that it’s not all bad news for a Biden-era program.

“The announcement is, to some extent, disconcerting but in some ways it’s actually maybe positive, or an affirmation,” said Muro, who coauthored a 2019 report making a case for why tech innovation should be spread across America. “The decision was not made to erase the funds for those six hubs. The administration decided to (let them re-apply). One can fret about that or worry that we’re losing time and that it’ll take at least a year for those to start. But on the upside, this represents an affirmation of the program very explicitly by the new administration.”

As other federal grants, departments and projects have found their funding at risk or gone in the new administration this year, “there’s been the worry about the erasure of the program and that’s simply not happened,” Muro added. “So maybe it was a surprise, but it does not seem to be damaging to the program. And for Colorado, it should not be a problem.”

Quantum lessons

Since receiving the federal grant last summer, Elevate announced plans to use some of the funding to develop a 70-acre campus in Arvada to offer lab space and offices for startups, as well as property for quantum companies to expand their presence in the Denver-Boulder region. 

They also set aside one-third of the federal funding to develop workforce-training programs and educate students from kindergarten on up about a career in quantum, contributions from industry allows staff to focus federal dollars on getting the word out. 

“It’s not like every K to 12 student is just thinking about quantum,” Olsen said. “And even when you start to get into college, it still is kind of one of those topics that, at best, you may know about it through the world of AI. There’s definitely a lot of awareness that needs to happen.”

The organization is also working with local workforce programs, such as ActivateWork, which was awarded a $150,000 contract to develop manufacturing and computing career paths for potential employees.

And even as IBM is taking the lead on curriculum, other Colorado-based quantum computer companies appreciate the investment. 

“We fully support ecosystem-building efforts like this that help expand access to quantum education,” Justin Ging, chief product officer of Atom Computing in Boulder, said in an email. “Quantum computing is a complex and rapidly evolving field, and training programs can play a key role in growing a skilled workforce that’s ready for what’s ahead. The more opportunities there are for people to learn and engage, the stronger our quantum community becomes.”

IBM’s course materials would be integrated at existing colleges and universities that already provide some sort of computer science or physics degree. Available course work includes introductory classes to higher-level lessons that also could be taken by students outside of the traditional technology majors. Students also get limited access to IBM’s quantum computers in the cloud to test it out. 

“They can actually access our IBM quantum systems in the cloud and run a real quantum circuit and start to learn what it means to work on a real quantum computer and translate what they’re learning in the classroom into real-world usage,” Holt said. 

IBM, which put its first quantum computer in the cloud in 2016, developed courses to train its own staff as well as educate anyone interested in learning how to take advantage of the science of tiny, sub-atomic particles and getting them to solve world problems faster than any classical computer. 

There’s already work being done to use quantum computing to model new drugs to cure infectious diseases, re-engineer fraud detection to reduce false positives, or better manage the energy grid as consumption changes, according to examples IBM shared. And to do that, the industry needs not just computer scientists and physicists but the mechanics, manufacturing staff and other skilled workers who know how to use a quantum computer and bring the tech to life or help build one.

“The reality is that creating the quantum workforce is something that we can’t do alone,” Holt said. “This is a global effort really. This is something where we need to work with universities, initiatives like Elevate Quantum, and specifically here in Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming.”

He pointed to a 2020 report from the University of Colorado that looked at how universities need to prepare for “the quantum revolution.” Nearly every company interviewed said they needed workers with doctorates. That may not be the case for long.

“As we build out the capabilities of quantum computers … and as the industry matures, the trend that we’re seeing is that those skills are shifting,” Holt said. “ A role that may have required a Ph.D. in the past, now you can get it with a master’s degree. And those that required a master’s degree, now you can get it with a bachelor’s degree. That’s an important shift.”