Union Minister for Electronics & Information Technology, Railways and Information & Broadcasting, Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw, announced the establishment of an Advanced Quantum Computing and Quantum Communications Lab at Malaviya National Institute of Technology (MNIT), Jaipur. The lab will be established under the Electronics and ICT Academic Project of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and will focus on building indigenous capabilities in Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), Quantum Computing simulation, and Quantum Sensing hardware components.
The Minister stated that while the current technological wave is driven by AI, the next major wave will be led by Quantum Technology, and the work undertaken will be of significant importance for the country. The lab will also undertake research in Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), which is important from the national security perspective, and the Minister urged MNIT Jaipur to take a leadership role in post-quantum cryptography.
Additionally, students of MNIT Jaipur will get access to Lam Research's "Semiverse" platform, a digital twin-based semiconductor fabrication and training ecosystem. Through Semiverse, students can study semiconductor chip structures in 3D, understand chip manufacturing processes, and simulate fabrication steps in a virtual environment. The Minister mentioned that industry estimates indicate a demand for more than a million semiconductor design workforce, which India can easily bridge, noting that companies like NVIDIA, Qualcomm, ARM, and AMD are already designing advanced 2nm and 3nm semiconductor chips in India.
The Government of India, as part of the Chips to Startup (C2S) Programme, is providing Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools to more than 323 universities across the country. These state-of-the-art semiconductor design tools from leading companies such as Synopsys, Cadence, and Renesas have already enabled the fabrication of more than 100 student-designed chips from institutions across India at Semiconductor Laboratory (SCL), Mohali.
An AI Lab will also be established at MNIT Jaipur, providing advanced compute and tools for research and innovation, with a focus on connecting it to the IndiaAI mission network. The Minister highlighted work being carried out by Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur related to deepfake detection technology.
Later, the Union Minister along with Shri Heeralal Nagar, Minister of State (IC) for Energy Department in the Government of Rajasthan, and Shri Gopal Sharma, Member of Rajasthan Legislative Assembly (Civil Lines Jaipur), inaugurated the Makers Lab at MNIT Jaipur. The Makers Lab will provide students with experiential and hands-on training opportunities in both software and hardware technologies, including sensors, embedded systems, compute devices, and electronics systems.