It is always risky to combine well-known and well-tested notions in order to describe something new, since the future usage of such combinations is unpredictable. After “quantum leaps” were appropriated by the public at large, nobody, except physicists and some chemists, seems to realize that they are exceedingly small, and that breathless descriptions of quantum leaps in policy, economy, engineering and human progress in general may actually provide an accurate, if sarcastic, picture of the reality. When the notion of the “marketplace of ideas” was embraced by academia, scientists failed to recognize that among other things this means spending 95% of your resources on marketing instead of research. Nevertheless, “quantum engineering” seems a justified and necessary name for the fast-expanding field, which, in spite of their close relations and common origins, is quite distinct from both “nanotechnology” and “quantum computing” in scope, approaches and purposes. Its subject covers the theory, design, fabrication and applications of solid-statebased structures, which can maintain quantum coherence in a controlled way. In a nutshell, it is about how to build devices out of solid-state qubits, and how they can be used.

The miniaturization of electronic devices to the point where quantum effects must be taken into account produced much of the momentum behind nanotechnology, together with the need to better understand and control matter on the molecular level coming from, e.g., molecular biology and biochemistry (see, e.g., Mansoori, 2005, Chapter 1).