Proposals should be in line with the NIS2 directive and the European Commission’s recommendations on a Coordinated Implementation Roadmap for the transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography and the PQ-REACT research topics. They should have software and technology as their primary objective and should be complete and concise.

The following types of activities, provided they are cost-effective and have a clear link to the Use Cases topics and objectives directly relevant to PQ-REACT, qualify for financial support: 

1. Design and development of software.
2. Software engineering aimed at adapting to new usage areas or improving software quality.
3. Events attendance and participation in technical, developer and community events.
4. Other activities that are relevant to adhering to robust software development and deployment practices.
5. Project management linked to the project execution.
6. Out-of-pocket costs for infrastructure essential to achieving the above.

The proposals must fit within one of the following Use Cases:

• Use Case 1 – Smart energy meters: upgraded with PQC capabilities, via testing and evaluating the efficiency of PQC algorithms in smart energy meters (loT) considering H/W limitations, bandwidth, length of Digital Signature PQC algorithms keys and signatures, CPU and memory usage etc.
• Use Case 2 – 5G and 6G architectures: Leveraging PQC and QKD hybridization approaches related to 5G and their evolution to 6G architectures. PQ-REACT will investigate their application to significant use-cases, especially related to authentication, and protection mechanism for the network infrastructure, addressing the security and performance requirements in highly-pervasive, critical networked environments.
• Use Case 3 – Context Agility Manager (PQC Benchmarking): Test and validation of innovative services/apps that use PQC algorithms, in terms of various parameters like CPU, memory, power consumption, bandwidth, etc., over a virtualized infrastructure via a monitoring tool provided by the project. The algorithms may be NIST approved or submitted in the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Call for proposals.
• Use Case 4 – Eclipse-Qrisp for PQC: Practical validation and assessment of the resilience of new applications/solutions (including loTs) using PQC techniques, exploiting the capabilities of an HPC (High Performance Computer) or QC (Quantum Computer) via a suite of tools (C++/Python/Qrisp). Additional tools like, Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA), Shor’s algorithm, algorithmic primitives (e.g., quantum Fourier transform (QFT), quantum phase estimation (QPE) and solving QUBO problem instances with QAOA are available in Qrisp.