Engineering Quantum Futures: Toward a Triple Helix Theory of Quantum Workforce Co-Development

This project will investigate how academia, industry, and government can work together to build educational infrastructure and workforce pathways for the emerging quantum engineering workforce. It will examine how cross-sector partnerships create educational infrastructure, prepare students and worker for quantum careers, and respond to changing national workforce needs. Results will be shared through webinars, podcasts, and publicly available white papers developed with the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center. This project will develop a Triple Helix Theory of workforce co-development to explain how partnerships among academia, industry, and government shape workforce formation in emerging fields of national priority. Using quantum engineering as the primary focus, the study will examine the organizational mechanisms through which these sectors jointly develop educational infrastructure and career pathways. It will compare current quantum workforce efforts with earlier workforce development in nuclear engineering and artificial intelligence (AI). The research will use oral histories, document analyses and case study analyses to identify how these partnerships form, operate, and change over time. The resulting theory will advance fundamental understanding of how cross-sector partnerships influence STEM workforce development in emerging technological fields. This project is supported by NSF’s EDU Core Research (ECR) program. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. Investments are made in critical areas that are essential, broad and enduring. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.