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Tony Uttley, the President of Honeywell Quantum Solutions (

If you are not a scientist or a techie, and perhaps even if you are, the word quantum might sound like something out of Star Trek. Its futuristic, for sure, but it is not fiction. Quantum computers, and the genuinely revolutionary computational power it promises, may not be too far off at all. At the vanguard of quantum computing is a name you might not expectHoneywell. While the company used to be known for its smart home products, such as thermostats or smoke alarms, the multinational conglomerate has more of its fingers in a lot more technology pies. Honeywell plays in four main areas: aerospace, performance materials and technologies, building technologies, and safety and productivity solutions. The industrial side of the business, through Honeywell Connected Enterprise, is creating momentum in the EPM (Enterprise Performance Management) category, with its industry-leading IoT platform, Honeywell Forge.

And, as we will go into today, one of the most radical, potentially world-changing technologies currently in developmentquantum computing. Behind Honeywells push in advancing quantum is a man named Tony Uttley, the President of Honeywells Quantum Solutions unit. Moor Insights & Strategy has been following Honeywells efforts in this area closely, and I jumped at the recent opportunity to interview Uttley on his units efforts and progress. Lets dive into Honeywell and Uttleys quantum journey.

What is quantum computing?

Before we get started, we should define what were talking about. Highly simplified, instead of using traditional computer bits (which operate on the binary of either on or off or 1 or 0), quantum computers utilize qubits, which possess the unique ability to be in both the 1 and 0 states simultaneously thanks to a property of quantum physics called superposition. Additionally, these computers can perform computations simultaneously, instead of sequentially (like traditional computing). It can do this due to entanglement, a quality of qubits that allows them to be joined together in a way that will enable each qubit to hold the information about all the others in the grouping (called a register in quantum jargon).

These qualities, combined, promise to blow the current most advanced supercomputers out of the water in terms of compute power and speed, with the potential to unlock technological advancements beyond what we can even fathom at this point.

While discussing the potential, Uttley shared a useful analogy: when classical computers were being developed, at the time, people thought there would only need to be a handful of them in the world. Sixty years later, and most people carry around their tiny computers in their pockets wherever they go. Computers have progressed and become more ubiquitous and profitable than anyone could have possibly imagined in the early days. And thats where we are now with quantum computingthe early days.

Tony Uttley in a spacesuit submerged inside NASAs Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory where astronauts are ... [+] trained to do spacewalks

Along came Tony

But lets rewind a little bit because its worth knowing how the man at the helm of Honeywells Quantum Solutions division ended up there. Uttley got his career start at NASAs Johnson Space Center, as the operations manager at NASAs Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory excited to apply his skills to the space program. He spent a decade at NASA, but at some point along the way realized that he was better at convincing really, really smart people to do things than actually doing them himself. This led to him transitioning to the world of strategy consulting, where he ended up working for the Boston Consulting Group for seven years, helping clients figure out how to achieve their business goals.

When he arrived at Honeywell, about a decade ago, he initially led global strategy and marketing for Honeywells largest division at the time, Automation & Control Solutions, an $18B portfolio of residential, commercial, and industrial controls. Following that role, Uttley led the companys residential business within the Americas Region. There he was responsible for driving the upgrade of Honeywells legacy thermostats (the bread and butter for the company for nearly a century) into connected, app-based smart thermostatsa foray into the new world of the smart home that Honeywell had never attempted before. It was a big undertaking, but, as a guy with a penchant for strategizing big ideas into fruition, Uttley was the man for the job.

Honeywells quantum leap

Honeywells quantum exploration began with two Ph.D. researchers coming forward with an intriguing proposition: Honeywells broad scope of technology was already uniquely suited to take on building a quantum computer. The company was already a leading manufacturer of hardware and software control systems, advanced electronics and optics and photonics (lasers, fiber optics, modulators, cryogenics, and ultra-high vacuum environments), all of which you need to build a quantum computer. Despite thinking it was the coolest thing ever, Uttley admitted he was initially skeptical due to it still being the very early days of quantum computing at the time.

After discussing it with higher-ups, however, an agreement was reached that pursuing the ambitious goal of quantum computing was, in fact, in line with Honeywells strategic imperatives to be a technology leader. Additionally, since many of the underlying technologies were already in development at Honeywell, investing in them and advancing them would benefit the rest of Honeywells business simultaneously. Lastly, Honeywell is one of the worlds leading controls companies, and quantum computing is, at its heart, a controls problem. Honeywell made critical investments to pursue the idea further. The questions that needed to be answered, to push the project forward were:

a)Can Honeywell build something that is genuinely a differentiated Quantum computer?

b)How can Honeywell leverage quantum technology, at this early stage, to customers benefitwill anyone pay to use it?

After the company felt like it had developed a differentiated capability with real potential, it formed a full team around the project, employing atomic, molecular, and optical physicists and other scientists, technicians, and engineers with specializations in trapped-ion quantum computing.

Challenges ahead demand trust

Uttley stressed the importance of building trust with the ecosystem around Honeywells quantum computer. While currently, the results of algorithms run on quantum can be tested and validated against those that run on classical computers, once the company pushes past the barrier of whats possible with classical computing, there will be nothing to cross-reference and validate results with. Honeywell will have to trust in its execution and be able to transfer that trust effectively to others to convince them to step into what Uttley called the virtual unknown. I suspect his knack for selling people on big ideas might come in handy there.

He went on to say that the scarcest resource right now, as quantum moves forward, is the lack of people. As he puts it, all the people who know how to do quantum computing have been gobbled up by companies such as Honeywell, startups, national labs, or academia. The next capacity constraint, according to Uttley, lies in the quantum computing systems themselves. Honeywell is only building a few systems because it knows the second generation will be coming down right behind it. Given the nature of quantum computing, it will potentially be 100,000 times better than the first. As he tells it, this could severely cut down the time to access the system itself. Because of this, Honeywell has been collaborating with companies that are not merely dabblingit knows for a fact that quantum will profoundly impact its sector. These businesses want to take advantage of the learning opportunity and start building use cases that work on these limited-capacity early quantum systems to scale up as the quantum volume increases eventually.

Wrapping up

We wrapped up our conversation on a topic that I believe was particularly illuminating in terms of understanding Tony and his past success, as well as having faith in his current quantum project. As he tells it, he watched the classic movie, The Right Stuff, as a kid, and from that point on, all he wanted to do was work for NASA. And so he did, eventually getting to work in the very place where NASA trains astronauts how to do spacewalks. NASA was his dream, he said, because its like looking at the future. Its a mission, and people work hard and go the extra mile when theyve got a mission they believe in.

In addition to informing his career trajectory, I believe that understanding makes him such an effective leader for teams to rally around. And now, hes found a new mission in quantum computing and is entirely focused on pushing this technology forward for the future of humanity. His enthusiasm was evident in our interview, emphasizing that he has the coolest job, working on the coolest topicon the planet. If he and his team maintain that passion and drive, its hard not to believe quantum computing success is within their reach. Im not a betting man, but if I were, I wouldnt bet against Tony.

Note: Moor Insights & Strategy writers and editors may have contributed to this article.

Disclosure: Moor Insights & Strategy, like all research and analyst firms, provides or has provided paid research, analysis, advising, or consulting to many high-tech companies in the industry, including 8x8, Advanced Micro Devices, Amazon, Applied Micro, ARM, Aruba Networks, AT&T, AWS, A-10 Strategies,Bitfusion, Blaize, Calix, Cisco Systems, Clear Software, Cloudera,Clumio, Cognitive Systems, CompuCom, Dell, Dell EMC, Dell Technologies, Diablo Technologies, Digital Optics,Dreamchain, Echelon, Ericsson, Extreme Networks, Flex, Foxconn, Frame, Fujitsu, Gen Z Consortium, Glue Networks, GlobalFoundries, Google (Nest-Revolve), Google Cloud, HP Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Honeywell, Huawei Technologies, IBM, Ion VR,Inseego, Intel, Interdigital, Jabil Circuit, Konica Minolta, Lattice Semiconductor, Lenovo, Linux Foundation,MapBox,Mavenir, Marseille Inc, Mayfair Equity, Meraki (Cisco),Mesophere, Microsoft, Mojo Networks, National Instruments, NetApp, Nightwatch, NOKIA (Alcatel-Lucent), Nortek,Novumind, NVIDIA, ON Semiconductor, ONUG, OpenStack Foundation, Oracle, Poly, Panasas,Peraso, Pexip, Pixelworks, Plume Design,Portworx, Pure Storage, Qualcomm, Rackspace, Rambus,RayvoltE-Bikes, Red Hat,Residio, Samsung Electronics, SAP, SAS, Scale Computing, Schneider Electric, Silver Peak, SONY,Springpath, Spirent, Splunk, Sprint, Stratus Technologies, Symantec, Synaptics, Syniverse, Synopsys, Tanium, TE Connectivity,TensTorrent,TobiiTechnology, Twitter, Unity Technologies, UiPath, Verizon Communications,Vidyo, VMware, Wave Computing,Wellsmith, Xilinx, Zebra,Zededa, and Zoho which may be cited in this article.

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Honeywells Tony Uttley And The Quest For Quantum - Forbes

Nonlinear x-ray spectroscopy

The extension of nonlinear optics to the x-ray spectral domain is a promising direction in the development of x-ray spectroscopy. Although theoretical concepts of nonlinear x-ray spectroscopy were developed decades ago, scientists still struggle to implement them because of the elusive nature of nonlinear effects. Eichmann et al. now present atomic momentum spectroscopy (AMS), which is based on the detection of the scattered atom after momentum transfer from x-ray photons (see the Perspective by Pfeifer). The authors show how AMS can observe stimulated x-ray Raman scattering signals at the neon K edge on a single-atom level and distinguish them from other competing processes. These results pave the way for future nonlinear x-ray spectroscopy methods for the study of x-raymatter interactions.

Science, this issue p. 1630; see also p. 1568

Addressing the ultrafast coherent evolution of electronic wave functions has long been a goal of nonlinear x-ray physics. A first step toward this goal is the investigation of stimulated x-ray Raman scattering (SXRS) using intense pulses from an x-ray free-electron laser. Earlier SXRS experiments relied on signal amplification during pulse propagation through dense resonant media. By contrast, our method reveals the fundamental process in which photons from the primary radiation source directly interact with a single atom. We introduce an experimental protocol in which scattered neutral atoms rather than scattered photons are detected. We present SXRS measurements at the neon K edge and a quantitative theoretical analysis. The method should become a powerful tool in the exploration of nonlinear x-ray physics.

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Photon-recoil imaging: Expanding the view of nonlinear x-ray physics - Science Magazine

Thegeneral theory of relativitywas published by the physicsgeniusmore than a century ago, to refine Isaac Newtons law of universal gravitation. Providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time, or spacetime, this model is still currently used by scientists asan explanationof gravitation in modern physics. Einsteins theory has important astrophysical implications as it alludes to the existence ofblack holes cosmic phenomenons in which space and time are distorted in such a way that nothing, not even light, can escape.

At the centre of a black hole, as described by general relativity, may lie agravitational singularity, a region where the spacetime curvature becomes infinite.

But whilemathematics says a singularity is possible, nature apparently proves these do not exist, Discovery Channels How The Universe Works exposed.

The series explained: When a giant dying star collapses, the mass of the star falls in and keeps falling in crushing down into an infinitely small point.

This is called the singularity.

But physicist Max Tegmark believes the singularity is just a fancy way of saying we have no idea what is happening here.

Astronomer Phil Plait explained why some experts have an issue with using this theory.

He said: The way our physics describes black holes when they form is youre taking a finite amount of mass and youre collapsing it down.

Its volume should shrink all the way down to zero, but that means it has infinite density and infinite gravity.

That doesnt make sense.

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Theoretical physics Lawrence Krauss then explained why some are questioning Einsteins theory.

He added: If you make a prediction and the answer is infinite, then it tells you that there is something wrong with your prediction.

We have never seen infinity in the universe.

Maybe a black hole with an event horizon described by general relativity just isnt the proper description of the physics.

Quantum mechanicsis a fundamental theory inphysicsthat provides a description of the physical properties ofnatureat the scale ofatomsandsubatomic particles.

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Leading astronomer and assistant director for Science Communication at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Centre, Michelle Thaller, explained why it is key to the debate.

She said in 2018: Have you ever thought about the term quantum mechanics and what those terms actually mean?

Everything in the universe is broken up into tiny units and there is a basic unit of energy, time and space that cannot be divided any smaller.

There is a limit to how small those things can be.

The smallest unit in the universe is what is known as a Planck Length to physicists.

But if there is a universal limit on the smallest size, then somethinginfinitelysmall cannot exist, according to some scientists.

Quantum mechanics expert Sean Carroll explained: If infinity doesnt exist, then singularities dont exist.

And if singularities dont exist, then Einsteins theory of General Relativity is not correct.

The simplest thing we can do is change some equations, change his theory of gravity.

Lets invent what we would call exotic speculative physics.

This has led scientists to invent the theory of the Planck Star.

Passing one in space would look like a black hole, but without a point of singularity at its core.

The star is just like a black hole, but it obeys the rules of quantum mechanics.

Physicist Max Tegmark detailed the new theory that has been proposed.

He said: Maybe things can be collapsed down to less than the Planck Length, or maybe you get stuck with a Planck-sized nugget.

It stabilises everything, keeps everything finite.

The reason why there are so many alternatives to black holes is because you can write down a gazillion different postulated mysterious new kinds of matter and say this exists, so maybe that explains the data.

The problem is there is no evidence that any of that kind of stuff exists.

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Einstein was wrong! Scientists call for new theory of relativity after black hole find - Daily Express