July 19, 2019, Moscow – Dmitry Zauers, Deputy Chairman of the Management Board of Gazprombank, spoke at a panel discussion at the International Conference on Quantum Technologies (ICQT) – 2019 in Moscow. This event is one of the main forums for discussing a broad range of issues and the outlook for development of quantum technologies.
This year, the ICQT conference was held for the fifth time and brought together over 1,500 scientists, representatives of government agencies and businessmen from Japan, France, Germany, the USA, Austria and other countries. In particular, such global leaders in the field of quantum technologies as Harvard University professor Mikhail Lukin, director of Google’s Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab Hartmut Neven, professor at Tokyo University Akira Furusawa, professor at the University of Maryland Christopher Monroe, professor Eugene Polzik from Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, Peter Zoller, professor at the University of Innsbruck, as well as many others, attended the conference.
For five days, the attendees discussed a wide range of topics, including the creation of a quantum computer, the development of quantum communications and a number of other issues related to the development of this promising high-tech area.
Together with Dmitry Zauers, Hartmut Neven, director of the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at Google; Michael Lukin, professor at Harvard University; and representatives of a number of Russian and international companies took part in the panel discussion entitled “Quantum technologies: business is here”. The moderator was Ruslan Yunusov, Chief Executive Officer of the Russian Quantum Centre (RQC).
In his presentation, Dmitry Zauers noted: “In the field of quantum technologies, Russia has a great future, and it is necessary to create conditions for the market to obtain practically applicable technologies, such as quantum cryptography, as soon as possible while the relevant demand is established from companies and institutions. Cybersecurity threats are on the rise, and the prospect of a quantum computer being created could compromise all systems of classical cryptography. Such a computer could be created in the foreseeable future, therefore, strategically speaking, it would be highly imprudent to ignore such a threat to arrays of confidential data. Gazprombank, as a financial institution, would like to protect the data about its customers and their transactions to the greatest possible extent, which is why we are focusing increased attention on working with quantum technologies. However, we have also done a lot of thinking about another key issue: how to convince other market participants that they need to be engaged in the development of this field of science. This cannot be done alone, and wasting time threatens the entire quantum industry with the prospect of lagging hopelessly behind foreign competitors. I am confident that right now is the time for Russian companies, banks, the state, scientific and educational institutions to pool their efforts in order to achieve a breakthrough in the field of quantum technologies”.
Earlier this year, during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Gazprombank, RQC, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Sberbank gave a demo on the first intercorporate quantum network. The quantum key distribution units supplied by the Russian Quantum Centre provided a secure video conferencing session between the stands of the two major banks and the international consulting company. Prior to this, in 2017, experts of the Russian Quantum Centre launched the first multi-node quantum network with three nodes and two quantum channels. Gazprombank has supported the developers of quantum communications systems at RQC and QRate since 2015. Since 2016, Gazprombank allowed its own infrastructure to be used for testing ready-to-use industrial-scale quantum cryptography solutions.
Communications and Marketing Department
Gazprombank (Joint Stock Company)
E-mail: pr@gazprombank.ru