This is one of the most staggering problems facing Jennifer Glick, an IBM researcher whose work is to find big problems that can benefit from quantum computing and then either try to solve them with existing quantum algorithms or create new ones for the purpose.

Quantum computing promises enormous advances in processing power over classical computing for certain problems that are intractably large or time-consuming for classical computers—the kind of problems Glick looks for. A quantum computer’s strength can be credited to the superposition and entanglement of quantum bits, or qubits, which offer an exponentially large computational space. For example, 50 perfect qubits can represent over a quadrillion states to explore.

Still, it’s a technology in its very early days. In two years at IBM, Glick has helped lead an effort to create partnerships that bring quantum technology into the real world. She spends a lot of her time hunting for problems and then developing and demonstrating ways in which a quantum computer could solve them faster than a classical one.