Quantum computing isn’t yet far enough along that it could have helped curb the spread of this coronavirus outbreak. But this emerging field of computing will almost certainly help scientists and researchers confront future crises.

“Can we compress the rate at which we discover, for example, a treatment or an approach to this?” asks Dario Gil, the director of IBM Research. “The goal is to do everything that we are doing today in terms of discovery of materials, chemistry, things like that, (in) factors of 10 times better, 100 times better,”

And that, he says, “could be game-changing.”