Date posted: 1st October 2026
How can organisations move from exploring quantum technology to identifying where it could have a real impact?
This was one of the key questions explored at the first event in the techBREK Quantum Series, hosted by Technology Ireland ICT Skillnet and Quantum Ireland at Trinity Innovation Hub on Wednesday, September 30th.
The event brought together industry and research perspectives from Cillian Smith of Citi, Bruno Chagas of Mastercard and Elena Blokhina of Equal1 to look at developments in quantum optimisation and quantum machine learning and how research in these areas is beginning to connect with practical applications.
Finding the right problems for quantum
Opening the event, Michael Dascal, VP of Quantum Technology at Fidelity Investments and co-founder of Quantum Ireland, provided an overview of the wider quantum landscape and the opportunities and challenges facing organisations exploring the technology.
While quantum computing has the potential to address certain types of complex problems, organisations need to understand where it could offer a genuine benefit. This means identifying suitable problem areas and considering what quantum approaches could offer compared with the technologies already available.
For businesses beginning to explore quantum, developing this understanding will be an important part of deciding where to focus research and experimentation.
The Importance of Benchmarking and Formulation
Cillian Smith from Citi focused on quantum optimisation, highlighting both its potential for enterprise applications and the technical challenges involved in mapping real world problems onto quantum systems.
Optimisation algorithms have potential across areas such as financial portfolio selection, trade settlement and logistics, including scheduling, where businesses need to identify the best outcome from millions of possible options. Smith highlighted the importance of developing these challenges effectively, explaining that properly reformulating a use case as a quantum-amenable problem, such as a Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimisation (QUBO) problem, can be more important than the specific solver used.
However, solving a problem using a quantum processor does not automatically make it the better approach. Smith stressed the importance of benchmarking when assessing potential quantum advantage, with quantum solutions tested against best-in-class classical approaches using the same problem formulation.
This type of rigorous testing is important for businesses looking to understand where quantum computing could offer practical value and where further research and investment may be justified.
Exploring Quantum Machine Learning in the Enterprise
Shifting the focus to machine learning, Bruno Chagas from Mastercard shared insights into how enterprise teams are exploring quantum machine learning (QML) in production like environments.
Chagas used financial fraud detection as an example of a complex challenge, where high transaction volumes, the need for real time processing and imbalanced data all need to be considered. He presented Mastercard’s research into a Mixture of Experts framework, combining autoencoder compression and classical neural networks with quantum classifiers to explore pattern recognition in high dimensional data.
The presentation demonstrated how quantum machine learning can be explored alongside existing classical technologies. For businesses, experimenting with these hybrid approaches provides an opportunity to develop practical experience and understand where quantum machine learning could have potential as the technology continues to develop.
Connecting research and industry
Elena Blokhina from Equal1 provided a research perspective through her presentation on QUBIC, an Irish quantum industrial research project that includes collaborators in the energy, pharmaceuticals, and materials sectors.
The project highlights the importance of connecting research with the needs of industry and exploring how developments in quantum technology can be translated into practical applications.
Collaboration will be an important part of this process. Researchers, industry, technology companies and other stakeholders each have a role to play in identifying opportunities and developing the expertise needed to turn research into applications.
From research to application
Although the speakers approached the subject from different perspectives, a common theme emerged throughout the event.
The focus is increasingly shifting from what quantum computing might be able to do in the future to understanding what can be tested and developed today.
For organisations exploring quantum technology, this means identifying the right problems, developing suitable approaches and measuring their performance against existing technologies.
It also means developing the skills and knowledge needed to understand where quantum could become relevant to individual organisations and sectors.
The first techBREK Quantum Series event provided an opportunity to explore these questions through the experiences of organisations already working in the area, while highlighting the research and collaboration taking place across Ireland.
Continuing the conversation
The techBREK Quantum Series continues on November 3rd at Trinity Innovation Hub, with the next event focusing on Quantum Skills Development. Click here to register.
As quantum technology continues to develop, building the skills and expertise needed to understand and apply it will be an important part of preparing organisations for the opportunities ahead.