King's College London

A King’s scientist and team are one of 20 out of 800 teams from around the world to enter the final stages of a major quantum competition. The XPRIZE Quantum Applications see teams compete for a $5 million prize to turn their proposed quantum projects into a reality to help solve real-world challenges. 

Dr Eleanor Crane from the Department of Physics is part of a team of world-leading quantum scientists, including Professor Steven Girvin from Yale, Professor Nathan Wiebe from the University of Toronto, and Professor Michael Gullans and Dr Alexander Schuckert from the University of Maryland. XPRIZE is recognised as a global leader in fostering teams of scientists to solve humanity’s greatest challenges through quantum science.

Dr Crane and her team’s project, Nature, aims to build a new form of quantum computing, able to simulate the fundamental particles of nature – fermions and bosons – directly, making it a faster and more efficient method than conventional quantum computers that rely on qubits. In so doing, the team aim to apply this to sustainability challenges, including carbon capture, and clean energy production, storage and delivery.

Dr Eleanor Crane said, “I am delighted to compete as a team in the last 20 teams globally in this highly impactful competition. The XPRIZE sees world-leading scientists from around the world compete to propose exciting quantum innovations in the face of major challenges which are beyond the reach of classical computers.

“For our team, it has enabled us to focus on the shared long-term goal of simulating the quantum properties of nature, combining our diverse skill sets to build a quicker and more efficient method of quantum computing for innovating green technologies. We are very excited to move to the next stage in this competition, and hopefully further our ambitious project.”

Developing net zero technologies such as carbon capture, clean energy generation and battery storage relies on complex, fundamental science. This including the need to develop synthetic photosynthesis, solar cells and hopefully advance fusion, and manipulate lithium-ion compounds for next generation batteries. Currently, this entails a trial-and-error approach to tweaking materials in a way that is time-consuming and hugely challenging.

The team believe this could be avoided by predicting the properties of the building blocks involved in these processes. At the heart of these properties lies interactions at the quantum scale between the fundamental particles of nature – bosons and fermions.

Dr Crane explains, “We are introducing a new framework for simulating these properties by computing with the fundamental particles of nature directly.

“We will treat naturally occurring fermions and bosons in quantum computing platforms as computational degrees of freedom. We will show how to perform quantum simulations with this method, avoiding the large algorithmic costs of using quantum bits to model the interacting quantum particles.”

This model has enabled the team to simulate processes for predicting materials for clean, affordable energy in a way that uses logarithmically less resources and is far quicker than using normal, quantum computers.

The team’s report will now undergo a deeper technical evaluation in the hope of being selected as finalists, which will be announced in December 2025. In the final round, teams will be asked to demonstrate credible progress toward measurable quantum advantage, supporting evidence for real-world impact to bag the $5 million prize.

Professor James Millen, Director of King's Quantum, who is not a member of the team said "As quantum technology progresses at an incredible pace, it's essential to harness its potential for society's benefit. Dr Crane and her team are world leaders at understanding the world through a quantum lens, and at King's we will watch their progress with great excitement."