SpeQtral hosts visit by Singapore’s ministers

The team at SpeQtral had the privilege of hosting Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for Economic Policies, Mr. Heng Swee Keat, the Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Communications and Information and Ministry of Health, Dr. Janil Puthucheary, and the team from the National Research Foundation (“NRF”) and Ministry of Communications and Information (“MCI”) at our office and lab. 

SpeQtral CEO, Mr. Lum Chune Yang and CTO, Dr. Robert Bedington shared about the company’s journey and evolution from a small R&D team at the Centre for Quantum Technologies (“CQT”) to a commercial company. Now, supported by investments from Xora Innovation and Singapore’s Office for Space Technology and Industry (“OSTIn”), the company is on an accelerated growth path to bring quantum key distribution (“QKD”) technologies to the commercial world with the formal kick-off of the SpeQtral-1 quantum satellite mission. They also talked about the global QKD landscape and SpeQtral’s top commercial priorities going forward. 

SpeQtral’s engineering team certainly did not miss the opportunity to whisk both Mr. Heng and Dr. Puthucheary into the quantum optics lab, and to showcase SpeQtral’s engineering and development on its next generation quantum light source that will be flown on its upcoming mission, SpeQtral-1. They explained that the quantum light source has to go through environment and vibration tests to be rugged enough to withstand the space environment.  

The team at SpeQtral were very encouraged by Mr. Heng’s and Dr. Puthucheary’s interest and enthusiasm around the QKD technology, global QKD applications and investments, as well as the nuts and bolts of developing space-based quantum systems.  

Thank you to the NRF team for organizing this visit. Check out Mr. Heng’s Facebook post at https://www.facebook.com/hengsweekeat .