A TRANSFORMATIVE INVESTMENT

Westpac Scholars Trust is investing in leading researchers shaping the future. Its early investment in Professor Ivan Kassal’s research has led to ground-breaking progress in solar energy conversion and quantum computing.

In 2016, Prof Ivan Kassal, an early career researcher now based at the University of Sydney, received a Westpac Scholars Trust Research Fellowship valued at $550,000. Ivan has worked at the forefront of research in quantum science, including in solar energy and in quantum computing. The Fellowship covered his salary, research costs and professional development for three years and meant he could focus on his goal of translating fundamental scientific breakthroughs into advances in clean energy technology.

One such breakthrough occurred last year, when Ivan’s team at the University of Sydney carried out the first simulation of a chemical reaction on a quantum computer. Quantum computers could be used in chemistry to deliver useful chemical simulations as they outperform any conventional supercomputer.

 

Ivan’s team has also been awarded funding by the Wellcome Leap Quantum for Bio program (Q4Bio), a multimillion-dollar US program focused on identifying applications in human health that will benefit from the quantum computers expected to emerge in the next three to five years.

 

Croatian born Ivan undertook his undergraduate studies at Stanford University in the US, before completing a PhD at Harvard. He came to Australia in 2011 as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Queensland until 2017 when the Westpac Fellowship enabled him to take up a position at the University of Sydney.

 

“Academic jobs are very competitive and it's very difficult to get one, but having this endorsement from the Westpac Scholars Trust was absolutely fantastic for allowing me to pursue my own ideas and do independent scientific work, which can be very difficult to do when you're just starting out.”

 

Ivan says the Fellowship encouraged him to continue working on quantum computing, which is now one of Australia’s national research priorities. “Today, governments and private industry are investing a lot into quantum computing. But there's a big question of what will quantum computers be useful for? A quantum computer is not just a faster computer ­– they're only useful for some specific things.

 

“I've shown that quantum computers would be useful for simulating chemistry,” he says. “The goal of doing chemistry on computers is to be able to quickly and accurately predict results of experiments so we don't have to send people into the lab to spend days and weeks doing experiments. But ordinary, classical computers can struggle to simulate the quantum mechanics inside molecules and chemical reactions.”

 

Quantum computing could accelerate the design new drugs or energy materials. At the moment, a lot of work in drug and materials discovery is trial and error, Ivan says, with people hoping they'll stumble on something new. “Whereas if you had a computer that could accurately screen millions and millions of candidates, you could do a much better job at predicting new drugs, new batteries, new solar cells, all new kinds of materials that will underpin, for example, the clean energy transition.”

 

While he can’t say when we’re likely to see practical applications of quantum computers, the time frame is becoming a lot closer, he says, thanks to funding. “Westpac Scholars Trust is investing in people who can have this longer term vision and these Fellowships in particular are a vote of confidence,” says Ivan.

 

Published 1 November 2024