Credit: Ö1
When the European flagship research programme for quantum research was launched seven years ago, there was talk of the "vision of quantum communication" - today, this vision is very concrete: the European Commission has urged the member states to secure their sensitive infrastructure with the technology developed within it, known as quantum cryptography. In Austria, the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology is coordinating this changeover and is playing a leading role in the main European and national initiatives, which are being driven forward by e.g. the Austrian Federal Ministry of Finance's security research funding programme KIRAS, among others, and carrying out tests with important national public pioneers such as the Austrian ministries BMK, BMWF and BMAW within the framework of QCI-CAT, for example.
At the end of December, Ö1 journalist Robert Czepel took a look at the state of development and visited the head of the Quantum Research Group Martin Stierle and Senior Scientist Hannes Hübel at the Photonics & Quantum Communication Laboratory at the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology in Vienna. On Friday 5 January 2024, Ö1 aired an excerpt from this visit in its Mittagsjournal programme, combined with a live link to Hannes Hübel at the AIT: