In July, The Grainger College of Engineering announced that it will have leadership roles in two massive new quantum computing initiatives: the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, seeded by $500 million in state funding, and the DARPA Quantum Proving Ground, supported by federal funding and the state’s co-investment of up to $140 million.

Researchers and students throughout The Grainger College of Engineering have positioned themselves to influence the future of quantum technology by working in this area on a scale few can match.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is home to half of the state’s quantum faculty, with 65+ scientists, 170+ graduate students, and 40+ postdocs leading $150M+ in cutting-edge quantum research. Grainger Engineering also graduates the fourth-largest number of undergraduate engineering and computer science students in the nation and is poised to supply the U.S. with a significant portion of its highly competent future quantum workforce.

Within Grainger Engineering, interdisciplinary quantum research occurs through faculty connections spanning six academic departments. Efforts have expanded to include collaborative entities such as the Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology (IQUIST) Center, IBM-Illinois Discovery Accelerator Institute (IIDAI), Chicago Quantum Exchange, Hybrid Quantum Architectures and Networks (HQAN), Quantum Sensing and Quantum Materials EFRC, Q2Work, Duality, Q-NEXT, and QuSTEAM Initiative.

Linking brilliant minds, who are dedicated to their craft, has led to major advancements in just the past calendar year. Grainger Engineering professors Virginia “Gina” Lorenz and Paul Kwiat debuted the world’s first public quantum network in November. The InterQnet project of fellow Grainger Engineering professors Eric Chitambar and Jacob Covey shows that “one promising route to have fully capable quantum computers is to distribute computation between smaller ‘nodes’ that are linked together over a network,” as Chitambar explained.

This kind of creativity in quantum has even led to artistic expression in the form of CASCaDe, a Collective for Art-Science, Creativity and Discovery, led by Physics professor Smitha Vishveshwara.

“Our approach to interdisciplinary research blends viewpoints from world-renowned faculty and inspirational students, while our entrepreneurial spirit guides a vision for the future that benefits everyone around us,” said Rashid Bashir, dean of The Grainger College of Engineering.

And two more major initiatives, announced in July, seek to fulfill the incredible potential quantum computing could have for the world around us in the not-too-distant future.

Grainger Engineers to Lead the 
Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park

On July 25, The Grainger College of Engineering joined other partners from around the state in officially announcing its leadership role in the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park. The project – a quantum-focused research and development campus in Chicago – will be managed by a University of Illinois-led organization on behalf of the State of Illinois and Governor J.B. Pritzker.

Photo Credit: Heather Coit

Advances in quantum information science and engineering, together with next-generation microelectronics, promise to transform computing, which underpins much of how our modern society operates. Grainger Engineering Founder Professor Harley Johnson has been tapped as the inaugural director of this massive transformational project seeded by $500 million in state funding, plus significant additional federal and industry support.

“Thanks to the vision of Governor Pritzker and our many partners across the state, the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park is poised to have an enormous impact in Illinois, across the nation, and around the world. We are proud to have been called on to lead the effort, and I’m personally thrilled to have an opportunity to help shape this historic project,” Johnson said. “The potential for our work in the Park to change the world is drawing comparisons to historic tech initiatives like the Manhattan Project or the development of Silicon Valley. Due to the unique nature of this public-private partnership, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make the world better through advancements in quantum computing and microelectronics.”

Indeed, the impact of quantum innovation and scale-up is predicted to be staggering. The Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park will propel development of a quantum market that has a predicted worth of $2 trillion in the next decade by closely aligning entrepreneurial activity with research firepower.

“This is a history-making moment for the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Grainger Engineering and for the entire State of Illinois,” said Chancellor Robert J. Jones. “We’re grateful to Governor Pritzker for his leadership and vision. And we are honored to be entrusted with the leadership of this revolutionary center for innovation in microelectronics and quantum computing.”

Governor Pritzker has worked to establish Illinois as the nation’s leader in quantum information science and technology, thus forming a natural partnership with Grainger Engineering and the University of Illinois.

“This Park represents a new step in quantum innovation that Grainger engineers and scientists are perfectly suited to scale up by bringing together key public and private stakeholders from universities and national labs, as well as state and local government,” said Bashir.

Photo Credit: credit Brian Stauffer, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Additionally, the university regularly partners with the nation’s tech industry and the venture capital community and is the headquarters of one of four quantum centers established in Illinois under the National Quantum Initiative Act.

“Through Governor Pritzker’s leadership, our state has made rapid and massive new investments in the quantum sector. We at the University of Illinois are grateful for his and our other stakeholders’ trust. We also stand eager and ready to build and implement the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park that will coalesce an extraordinary network of private and public partners, leading the way to a new quantum economy,” said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation Susan Martinis.

Quantum computing industry leader PsiQuantum, based in Palo Alto, CA, announced that it will launch construction of the world’s first utility-scale fault-tolerant quantum computer at the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park. The massive project, estimated to cost more than $1 billion, will come to Illinois in part because of the world-class shared cryofacility that will be built at the heart of the Park.

Photo Credit: Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation

Brian DeMarco, Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of Physics and IQUIST director, along with Laura Appenzeller – executive director of the University of Illinois Research Park and assistant vice chancellor for innovation at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign – will serve on the Park’s leadership team.

Researchers and industry collaborators, DeMarco believes, will unlock the power of quantum computing to enable new approaches to drug discovery, financial fraud detection, logistics optimization, climate prediction, and more.

“We at Grainger Engineering and the University of Illinois have a history of developing innovation that breaks boundaries. This stems from our commitment to serve the state, the nation, and the world,” DeMarco said. “In much the same way that U.S. development of the Internet led to entirely new industries and markets – fundamentally changing our day-to-day lives – the race to form new achievements in quantum will also have similar implications.”

Announcing the

Illinois DARPA Quantum Proving Ground

Just a week prior to announcing the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, DeMarco stood on stage alongside Governor Pritzker in Chicago to announce the new federally and state-funded Quantum Proving Ground (QPG), which promises to combine scientific rigor with industry and academic expertise to design the future of quantum computing.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and other agencies will provide federal funding. Governor Pritzker and the State of Illinois pledged to coinvest up to $140 million in the project.

DeMarco, a champion of advancing investments in quantum technology and education, underscored his long-standing commitment at the DARPA announcement.

“I was delighted when DARPA approached me and my colleague, Harley Johnson, with the Quantum Proving Ground concept,” said DeMarco. “It was our pleasure to help plan the partnership and the program we are announcing today, which I believe is essential to securing U.S. leadership in the global race to utility-scale quantum computing.

“The Quantum Proving Ground is an incredible opportunity to advance next-generation computing technologies that have the potential to impact society, the economy, and national security.” 

DeMarco’s role with the Quantum Proving Ground serves as part of the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park.

As a partner, Grainger Engineering’s expertise complements the QPG’s mission to benchmark quantum computing applications and algorithms and to significantly expand efforts to validate the progress of quantum computing hardware. DARPA’s goal is to determine if it’s possible to build an industrially useful quantum computer much faster than is conventionally predicted.

“Our opening position is skepticism,” said Dr. Joe Altepeter, the DARPA program manager leading the charge on this exploration and a U. of I. alumnus. “Specifically, skepticism that a fully fault-tolerant quantum computer with a sufficient number of logical qubits can ever be built. We will walk into the room and say, ‘We’re pretty sure whatever you’re doing is not going to work.’ I will bring a small army of scientists and engineers, we will listen to your evidence, and we will double and triple check using our own analysis. And if we’re convinced the technology you’re developing checks out and you’re onto something big, we’ll tell the rest of government and become a strong advocate for your approach.”

As Pritzker mentioned at the press conference, that kind of rigorous and comprehensive approach to the project is not lost on the state’s top academic institutions: the U. of I. continues active partnerships in quantum with the University of Chicago, Northwestern University and the Chicago Quantum Exchange, working together to achieve remarkable scientific progress through incremental steps.

“In the history of our state, there have been events that, at the time, flew under the radar, because they may have felt abstract but in retrospect turned out to be historic moments that signaled a future of innovation and progress that shifted the course of history. This may very well be one of those moments,” Pritzker said. “It was 32 years ago, just down the road at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, that a group of students and researchers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications developed and launched the first inline and graphic web browser.

“Leading that charge was (DARPA), which gave birth to the fundamental elements that created the internet. It is, in that same spirit, that I stand here today – alongside some of the brilliant minds at DARPA – to celebrate another groundbreaking collaboration called the DARPA-Illinois Quantum Proving Ground.”