In 1998, De Brouwer organized the ‘First International Conference of Quantum Information and Computation’ at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels - sponsored by the European Office of Aerospace Research and Development of the United States Air Force. He also sponsored the Centre for Quantum Computation of the University of Oxford.

Since 2003, he has served as a Director of the Tau Zero Foundation, which was formerly known as NASA’s Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project. Dan Brown's novel Angels and Demons’ treatment of anti-matter as a key plot-element is said to have been inspired by Steve Howe, a practioner of the Tau Zero Foundation.