5 New Quantum Research Programs

Grainger Engineering launched its Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Center less than two years ago. World-class IQUIST faculty are already making good on this investment—and cementing the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Midwest, through the Chicago Quantum Exchange, as a quantum science powerhouse.

A $25 million award from the National Science Foundation will launch the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Hybrid Quantum Architectures and Networks. One of only three Quantum Leap Institutes in the country, HQAN also includes partners from the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin, and industry. It will be led by Professor Brian DeMarco from the Department of Physics. The National Science Foundation is also supporting a three-year quantum education and workforce development program called Q2Work that will be led by IQUIST’s Emily Edwards. Q2Work is a leading member of the National Q-12 Education Partnership spearheaded by NSF and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The Department of Energy, meanwhile, awarded $12.6 million for an Energy Frontier Research Center for Quantum Sensing and Quantum Materials. Led by Fox Family Professor Peter Abbamonte, also from the Physics Department, QSQM includes partners from the University of Illinois at Chicago and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

Grainger Engineering faculty are also part of two of the five DOE Quantum Information Science Research Centers announced in August—Q-NEXT and the Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center.

These new centers come in a year when the university has added 10 new quantum-related faculty including: Mikael Backlund in Chemistry; Simeon Bogdanov in Electrical & Computer Engineering; Felix Leditzky in Math; Kohei Kishida in Philosophy; Jacob Covey, Elizabeth Goldschmidt, Yonatan Kahn, Angel Kou, Fahad Mahmood, and Wolfgang Pfaff in Physics.

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