Picture: QuantrolOx and QURECA
PRESS RELEASE
Espoo, Finland / Glasgow, UK — 26th August 2026
QURECA and QuantrolOx today announced a partnership to address the biggest constraint on quantum’s industrial scale-up: a global shortage of engineers with hands-on experience in developing and operating the quantum hardware stack.
The partnership brings Quantum EDGE Academy into the QURECA catalogue. Built on QuantrolOx’s Quantum EDGE measurement and automation platform, the Academy uses software workflows similar to those used by QuantrolOx engineers to automate QPU development, tuning, characterisation and system operation for hardware teams internationally.
Industry-wide, there is only one qualified candidate for every three open quantum roles (McKinsey, Quantum Technology Monitor), and in the US, job postings requiring quantum skills nearly tripled between 2011 and mid-2024 (MIT Sloan Quantum Index Report, 2025). In the UK, the £2.5 billion National Quantum Strategy names the skills gap as a national priority.
The workforce challenge
Quantum education today is heavy on theory and light on practice. Universities are producing capable quantum theorists, but laboratories and companies increasingly need a broader practical workforce: engineers, technicians, and experimentalists who can operate dilution refrigerators, fabricate devices, develop components, measure qubits, and troubleshoot complex hardware setups.
This skill has historically been built over years of PhD and postdoctoral apprenticeship inside a limited number of research groups. Online quantum literacy courses have widened access to the concepts, but they have not widened access to practical laboratory training. Lab time remains essential, but it is expensive, scarce, and difficult to scale with the number of people the industry needs.
The gap slows down every lab, every startup and every national programme it touches.
Dominic Lennon, Director of Product, QuantrolOx – “You can install the hardware in eighteen months; you cannot conjure an experienced experimentalist in eighteen months. Quantum EDGE Academy is how we close that gap at the pace the industry actually needs, not by writing a training curriculum from the outside, but by teaching the exact workflows our engineers run on live hardware every day.”
What sets Quantum EDGE Academy apart
Most quantum education today – including QURECA’s existing catalogue – teaches concepts such as superposition, entanglement, and algorithms. That is necessary and valuable, and at school and early-career level it builds the broad pipeline the industry needs.
Quantum EDGE Academy sits one layer deeper. It teaches the practical quantum hardware skills using the same measurement and automation platform QuantrolOx’s engineers run on operating quantum hardware today. Like a flight simulator, it lets learners build real competence in a realistic environment before they touch fragile, expensive systems.
With hardware access scarce and mentor time even scarcer, the Academy acts as a bridge: increasing training throughput, reducing costly mistakes, and lowering the supervision burden. As the industry moves from lab to fab, it is designed to become part of any serious quantum workforce programme.
Courses carry Continuing Professional Development (CPD) certification through QURECA.
The programme is offered to universities through flexible commercial models, including per-seat cohort pricing and departmental subscriptions, so institutions can scale participation without a large upfront commitment.
Dr Araceli Venegas-Gomez, CEO and Founder, QURECA – “We’re delighted to be partnering with QuantrolOx on Quantum EDGE Academy. It’s a genuinely innovative approach to quantum education, giving learners real laboratory intuition without needing lab access, and exactly the kind of practical training our network has been asking for.”
Complementary strengths
QuantrolOx contributes Quantum EDGE Academy, built on Quantum EDGE — the automation and measurement platform used by teams industrialising quantum technologies worldwide. QURECA contributes a global reputation in quantum education, a catalogue of over 40 CPD-certified courses, and an established network across universities, research institutions and industry spanning Europe, North America, Latin America and India.
From simulation to real systems
Institutions come to the Academy from different starting points. Some are training people to work in a lab they already run. Some are staffing an expansion. Some are building quantum capability for the first time.
For institutions that want to move beyond simulation, VIDYAQAR offers a route to a complete quantum system for education, research, testing, and benchmarking – built on tested and validated hardware and designed to support a wide range of laboratory and training environments. Together, Quantum EDGE Academy and VIDYAQAR create a practical training ladder: from simulation-first learning to guided work on real systems, and then to more advanced quantum hardware environments.
The common constraint is skilled people. A new facility, an expanded facility, and an existing facility all face the same challenge: capital equipment only delivers results when there are people trained to operate it.
Availability
The pilot cohort opens for enrolment in September 2026. Universities, national laboratories and industry partners interested in participating can contact sales@quantrolox.com
About QuantrolOx
QuantrolOx is the developer of Quantum EDGE, a measurement and automation platform for quantum technologies. A spin-out of the University of Oxford, QuantrolOx’s hardware-agnostic, AI enabled platform enables teams to create automated workflows for materials research, process development, QPU development, quality assurance, failure analysis, and the operational runtime of quantum computers – providing an integrated, end-to-end data environment critical to industrialisation of quantum technologies.
Its Quantum EDGE Academy has been developed with leading quantum labs to accelerate the hardware training path for the future quantum workforce that still does have access to an actual system.
It applies the same platform and engineering expertise to training the next generation of quantum engineers. QuantrolOx also offers VIDYAQAR, an integrated, open-architecture superconducting quantum system for education, research, testing, and benchmarking.
QuantrolOx works with quantum technology companies, national laboratories, and research institutions worldwide. www.quantrolox.com
About QURECA
QURECA provides professional services, resources and training to drive the growth of the global quantum technologies ecosystem, bringing together industry, academia and government through education, tailored workshops and events. Our mission is to build a strong, connected and inclusive quantum community worldwide. www.qureca.com
Media contacts
QuantrolOx: media@quantrolox.com
QURECA: Dr Araceli Venegas-Gomez — CEO and Founder, QURECA — info@qureca.com