At UConn's first annual Quantum UP! Challenge, I moderated a panel discussion on the impact deeptech will have on Connecticut's economy. The panel brought together three people who collectively represent a significant share of the institutional architecture behind Connecticut's quantum ambitions.
Pamir Alpay — Vice President for Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, University of Connecticut
Rich Jacob — Associate Vice President for Federal and State Relations, Yale University
David Steuber — Chief of Staff, Department of Economic and Community Development
The conversation covered some good ground. Connecticut has robust industry strength in quantum — the research base, the institutional partnerships, the early-mover advantage. The harder question, and the one that animated the best moments of the discussion, is what it takes to turn that into an economy students actually want to enter. How do you get someone studying law or public policy to see quantum as their problem too? How do you make the ecosystem legible to people who aren't physicists?
I hope that folks left with a cleaner sense of what the actual challenge is: not whether Connecticut can compete in quantum, but whether the people who will power that economy can see themselves in it. Worth asking. Worth asking again.