The advent of quantum computing is going to revolutionize computer science as we know it. The “quantum era” is right around the corner and promises to impact program computation to the point that it might even be possible to solve NP-complete problems. All major software companies, from IBM to Google, and others, are investing hundreds of millions of dollars to define novel hardware and software instruments to reach quantum supremacy and embrace the change.

However, large scale pure quantum software systems are far to come yet, so there is a growing interest in developing hybrid Quantum Based software Systems (QBSs), where quantum components are integrated in traditional software applications. Still, the development of QBSs remains challenging for a variety of reasons.

The lack of multidisciplinary skills, the primordial programming language support, the absence of integrated development environments, or the lack of a development community are just some of the reasons why there is an increasing interest in the emerging research area of quantum software engineering, that is, the definition of methods, practices, and tools to support the development of QBSs.

The QUASAR – QUAntum software engineering for Secure, Affordable, and Reliable systems project aims at developing novel methods and instruments that enable quantum software engineering. It specifically targets three key aspects connected to the architecture, quality, and reliability of QBSs. More specifically, QUASAR aims to: (a) provide methodologies, techniques, and tools that support the design and modeling of QBSs, also supporting non-expert designers and developers in the creation of QBSs; (b) define reference taxonomies to characterize the quality of QBSs and provide semi-automated support for the detection and removal of quality problems, in particular related to maintainability and security; (c) develop verification & validation techniques, including approaches to detect, mitigate, and analyze the risks of failures and vulnerabilities in QBSs.

All research activities will be based on concrete use cases, in particular the application of quantum methods to self-driving cars. The project leverages the solid research records and previous collaborations of its participants, whose combined expertise will help to reach the foreseen goals. In addition, the participation of one of the project partners to aQuantum will help in the identification of the requirements and in the integration and evaluation of the developed solutions.