Quantum Funding, Quantum Ecosystem

Sociology University of Copenhagen to map quantum tech’s path with DKK 50M

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October 12, 2026 by Ivy Delaney
Photo: Olala · news.ku.dk

The University of Copenhagen’s Department of Sociology will co-lead a new research centre focused on the societal impact of quantum technologies, with a DKK 50 million grant from the Carlsberg Foundation. Professor Christian Borch will co-lead ‘Crafting Quantum: From Scientific Promise to Societal Pathways’, one of three centres the foundation established to mark its 150th anniversary.

The centre will combine humanities and social science research with the Danish quantum ecosystem to examine how these technologies gain public acceptance and responsible governance. Professor Borch explained that quantum technologies are powerful yet difficult to understand, highlighting the need for interdisciplinary understanding.

‘Crafting Quantum’ Centre Explores Technology’s Societal Integration

Professor Christian Borch of the University of Copenhagen will co-lead the centre, focusing on the transition of quantum technologies from theoretical potential to practical societal application. This funding will support a six-year program dedicated to understanding how coordination, valuation and public acceptance shape the future of quantum technology in Denmark. Researchers will combine historical analysis with studies of organization, management and sociology, working closely with the existing Danish quantum ecosystem.

The centre’s work aims to build Denmark’s capacity to not only develop quantum technology, but also to guide its understanding and integration into society, ensuring responsible innovation and informed public discussion. Long-term, the centre intends to cultivate talent and generate knowledge within the humanities and social sciences, supporting responsible entrepreneurship and governance in the quantum field.

Professor Christina Lubinski and Professor Silviya Svejenova, both from Copenhagen Business School, will join Professor Borch in leading the initiative. This investment emphasises a growing recognition that strategic importance requires both technological advancement and societal understanding and acceptance of emerging technologies.

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Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney has been working with neural networks and machine learning since the mid-nineties, back when a couple of hidden layers and a long afternoon of training counted as ambitious. She has watched the field go from academic curiosity to the thing quietly running underneath everything, and she brings that long view to quantum computing. For Quantum Zeitgeist she covers the ground where the two fields meet. That means quantum machine learning and the variational algorithms it leans on, and it also means the less glamorous but more interesting story of classical machine learning already doing real work inside quantum machines, decoding error-correcting codes, calibrating noisy hardware and learning the error models that simulators depend on. She writes about the hardware those algorithms have to run on too, and about the post-quantum cryptography scramble that the same hardware has set off. Her stories typically start with the paper, whether that is peer-reviewed work, conference proceedings or an arXiv preprint, with the source linked so you can hold a claim up against the research it came from. She is unimpressed by benchmarks that will not say what they beat, and by demonstrations that only work in the press release.

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