Oxford University today joins a consortium led by the digital quantum computing company, SEEQC, to build and deliver a full-stack quantum computer for pharmaceutical drug development for Merck KGaA. The consortium has today been awarded a £6.85M grant by Innovate UK’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) to build a commercially scalable quantum computer designed to tackle prohibitively high costs within pharmaceutical drug development. The partnership will accelerate the use of quantum computing within pharmaceutical research to dramatically reduce the time required for drug development on a global scale.

Professor Charlotte Deane, who leads the Oxford Protein Informatics Group in the Department of Statistics and Professor Frank Von Delft, at the Centre for Medicines Discovery at the Nuffield Department of Medicine, will be leading from Oxford University. Find out more.