Department of Science & Technology’s networked program on Quantum Enabled Science and Technology (QuEST) is aimed at considerably ramping up research and development activities in this emerging field that promises to grow important both strategically and economically, in a calibrated manner that will ensure that the nation reaches, within a span of ten years, the goal of achieving the technical capacity to build Quantum Computers and Communications Systems comparable with the best in the world, and hence earn a leadership role. The initial three-year period of this mission lays emphasis on building devices, applications and human resources directed towards this goal. During this phase the researchers involved are targeting to make quantum processors and logic gates, quantum light sources, single photon detectors, quantum sensors and imaging devices, quantum memories, improved quantum clocks and they also intend to demonstrate quantum key distribution and entanglement of distant qubits.

This project evolved through a careful and deliberate process involving all stakeholders and experts in the field and includes 50 scientific proposals chosen through a national call and selection process initiated by the DST. These proposals are arranged in four thematic groups characterized by the concrete physical system constituting the elementary unit, namely the qubit.