What do underwater navigation, drug safety, and air traffic control have in common? Each creates challenges that quantum science and technology could solve.
In Connecticut, the unique public-private partnership QuantumCT is accelerating research to meet those challenges head onand to position Connecticut as a global quantum technology hub.
As of this spring, nine Connecticut-based research groups have received one-year seed grants for exploratory quantum projects. Each project aims to tackle a challenge problem issued by corporate partners in the state, like the need to develop algorithms that simulate molecular drug actions in the body, or to invent exquisitely accurate but hardy sensors that work in extreme environments with little power.
In other words, the projects are directly relevant to Connecticut industries, including aerospace, biotech, and life sciences. This practical approach to science is called use-inspired research.
These grants are fertilizing creative, potentially transformative projects in quantum science and technology across several key industries, all of which are central to Connecticuts present and future economy, says Michael Crair, Vice Provost for Research and William Ziegler III Professor of Neuroscience and Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Science at Yale University.
The seed grants are funded by the University of Connecticut and Yale University and distributed via QuantumCT. Research results will help QuantumCT plan long-term research eligible for competitive funding through the National Science Foundations Regional Innovation Engines (a program established through the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act).
The aim of QuantumCT is to make Connecticut a global destination for quantum education, job training and equitable job growth, research innovation, and industry excellence.
Because large universities and industry in Connecticut have joined forces, sharing resources and expertise under the QuantumCT umbrella, we are realizing a faster pace of quantum innovationand advancing our states role as a leader in quantum science and technology, says Pamir Alpay, Vice President for Research, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship and Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Connecticut. The seed grants will fuel not only quantum discovery but also career opportunities in a high-demand STEM field.
Each project is collaborative, bringing together researchers from UConn, Yale, and industry partners.
The projects foster interactions among a range of researchers from faculty to students to industry scientists, allowing them to pool their knowledge and creativity at top-of-the-line laboratory facilities in Connecticut, Alpay notes. These collaborations also offer rising quantum scientists a look at potential career paths in industry.
Advanced sensing
Airplanes, ships, and other vehicles rely on sensors for accurate navigation. But current sensor technologies have important limitations, and five of the project teams are working to develop better ones.
In one, led by Charles Ahn and Alexander Balatskyphysics professors at Yale and UConn, respectivelythe aim is to develop a robust, highly sensitive radiofrequency (RF) sensor that outperforms state-of-the-art directional sensors. To do this, the team is studying how electromagnetic waves interact with atom-sized magnets.
We incorporate magnetic atoms on thin films on the nanoscale, says Dung Vu, a Yale postdoctoral associate on the team, which also includes collaborators from RTX Technology Research Center (RTRC), the research arm of RTX and its three businesses Collins Aerospace, Pratt & Whitney, and Raytheon.
By changing properties such as energy and polarization of the light we shine on to the film, we can manipulate the quantum magnets properties, then measure the change of the magnetic field around them when they interact with light, Vu says.
The devices, Vu explains, can be used to make RF sensors that may be useful for airborne and autonomous vehicles.
Another team is developing innovative fiber sensors for a magnetic-aided inertial navigation unit for a global navigation satellite system (GNSS). With its extraordinary sensitivity, this technology is designed to operate in environments like the deep ocean and underground, where GNSS signals can be jammed, spoofed, or otherwise unreliable. Electrical engineers Faquir Jain and John Chandy of UConn and Fengnian Xia of Yale are behind that effort.
The sensor can detect ultra-low magnetic fields that help with navigation with very low power consumption and cost, Jain says.
A key challenge for next-generation magnetic sensors is to limit the devices SWaP (size, weight, and power consumption). Currently, the best ones require supercooled liquid helium. A seed project by assistant professors Yu He of Yale (applied physics) and Pavel Volkov of UConn (engineering) is pursuing sensors cooled with liquid nitrogena much more user-friendly substance.
The results will form one pillar for the eventual theory-experiment-industry collaboration, Volkov says.
Highly accurate sensors are vulnerable to miniscule errors and noise in the data. A team led by Yale engineering professor Hong Tang is building ultra-thin silicon nitride microwheels to create a tough, low-SWaP sensor whose round shape is designed to reduce error.
Meanwhile, Yale associate professor of physics and applied physics Peter Rakich is developing a technique to attach microscopic mirrors to the end of silica fibers, creating a tiny, high-finesse device called a resonator. This resonator should allow precise control of quantum particles, like the ability to couple light particles with ions. That could advance not only sensors, but also quantum computers and networking.
Computing revolutions
With quantum technologies poised to revolutionize computing, many industries stand to benefit.
Quantum entanglement, the eerie phenomenon by which two particles are linked as if they were one, is central to quantum computing and a major reason why the technology is expected to deliver vast improvements. In fact, entanglement can be considered a key resource in quantum computing, and as with any resource, there are better and worse ways of distributing it. Leandros Tassiulas and Shan Zuo, electrical engineering faculty at Yale and UConn, respectively, are studying how quantum computing systems can generate entanglement across multiple users in an equitable way.
Air traffic controllers, delivery route planners, and factory managers are among the many workers who face optimization problems: how to make actions most efficient. But optimization problems can be fiendishly difficult to solve, especially where there are hard constraints like the need for airplanes to avoid no-fly zones, trucks to refuel, or machines to complete tasks in a certain order. Like classical computers, quantum computers can use heuristics to tackle optimization problemswhich remain extremely challenging to solve.
A joint Yale-UConn team led by Yale physics professor Steven Girvin is exploring whether new algorithms could help quantum computers handle hard constraints on optimization problems. The research should also have relevance to problems like portfolio optimization and risk assessment that frequently arise in domains like finance and insurance, supply-chain logistics, and flight route planning, according to Amit Surana, an RTRC researcher working with the team.
The value proposition is that even slight improvements to logistics, even by half a percent, can mean huge savings, Surana says.
Progress in life sciences
Computing is also a focus of two teams led by Yale chemistry faculty members Victor Batista and Tianyu Zhu, which are exploring quantum solutions to problems in drug development.
One complex challenge researchers face is efficiently identifying drugs that will bind tightly to the intended receptor. Zhu and Batista, with partners at UConn, including physics professor Lea Ferreira Dos Santos and representatives of Mirion Technologies and Boehringer Ingelheim, are developing algorithms that run on quantum computers to tackle this task.
Drug safety, too, might be improved by quantum computing. New drugs must be rigorously checked for possible toxic side effects on the heart, liver, and immune system. As part of a de-emphasis on animal testing, the industry has been studying the use of classical computing tools like machine learning and artificial intelligence to evaluate possible side effects. But quantum computing techniques remain relatively unexplored.
So, another group working with Zhu and Batista is developing algorithms that use toxicology data to predict the safety of drug candidates. They are studying a hybrid approach in which a classical computer does a first check for toxicity, then drug candidates that pass that test undergo a further check by a quantum algorithm. Such a hybrid quantum-classical approach is a new and potentially highly effective way to do AI. Project partners include UConn professor Bodhisattva Chaudhuri and researchers with Novartis and Pfizer.
With this method, says Anthony Smaldone, a graduate student in the Batista lab, we can remove drugs that are highly likely to fail in testing. Then we dont have to rely on animal testing so heavily.
The hybrid method allows for tinkering that should help researchers determine where quantum computers offer efficiency gains, Smaldone explains.
We can slowly change our hybrid models, taking out classical components and putting quantum components in, and see what works and what doesnt, he says. Hopefully, as were putting in these quantum components, we can start to see quantum advantages in doing so.
Currently, Smaldone says, the team is working with simulations only. Real-world success will have to wait for certain types of hardware and algorithms to catch up. But this shows the first theoretical framework to do this efficiently, he says.
See the article here:
Quantum Seed Grants Are Funding Solutions to Real-World Problems - UConn Today - University of Connecticut
- Mathematician breaks down how to defend against quantum ... - Phys.Org [Last Updated On: February 28th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 28th, 2017]
- Here Is Everything You Need to Know About Quantum Computers - Interesting Engineering [Last Updated On: March 18th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 18th, 2017]
- Quantum Computing Market Forecast 2017-2022 | Market ... [Last Updated On: March 18th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 18th, 2017]
- What is Quantum Computing? Webopedia Definition [Last Updated On: March 18th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 18th, 2017]
- Quantum computing is about to disrupt the government contracts market - Bloomberg Government (blog) [Last Updated On: April 22nd, 2017] [Originally Added On: April 22nd, 2017]
- Scientists: We Have Detected the Existence of a Fundamentally New State of Matter - Futurism [Last Updated On: April 22nd, 2017] [Originally Added On: April 22nd, 2017]
- What Sorts Of Problems Are Quantum Computers Good For? - Forbes [Last Updated On: April 22nd, 2017] [Originally Added On: April 22nd, 2017]
- quantum computing - WIRED UK [Last Updated On: April 22nd, 2017] [Originally Added On: April 22nd, 2017]
- Inside Microsoft's 'soup to nuts' quantum computing ramp-up - Computerworld Australia [Last Updated On: April 29th, 2017] [Originally Added On: April 29th, 2017]
- Molecular magnets closer to application in quantum computing - Next Big Future [Last Updated On: May 15th, 2017] [Originally Added On: May 15th, 2017]
- The Bizarre Quantum Test That Could Keep Your Data Secure - WIRED [Last Updated On: May 18th, 2017] [Originally Added On: May 18th, 2017]
- IBM boosts power of quantum computing processors as it lays ... - www.computing.co.uk [Last Updated On: May 22nd, 2017] [Originally Added On: May 22nd, 2017]
- IBM makes leap in quantum computing power - ITworld [Last Updated On: May 22nd, 2017] [Originally Added On: May 22nd, 2017]
- Toward mass-producible quantum computers | MIT News - MIT News [Last Updated On: June 2nd, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 2nd, 2017]
- Purdue, Microsoft Partner On Quantum Computing Research | WBAA - WBAA [Last Updated On: June 2nd, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 2nd, 2017]
- Tektronix AWG Pulls Test into Era of Quantum Computing - Electronic Design [Last Updated On: June 2nd, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 2nd, 2017]
- Google to Achieve "Supremacy" in Quantum Computing by the End of 2017 - Big Think [Last Updated On: July 1st, 2017] [Originally Added On: July 1st, 2017]
- Quantum Computing Becomes More Accessible - Scientific American [Last Updated On: July 1st, 2017] [Originally Added On: July 1st, 2017]
- Qudits: The Real Future of Quantum Computing? - IEEE Spectrum - IEEE Spectrum [Last Updated On: July 1st, 2017] [Originally Added On: July 1st, 2017]
- Alkermes and IBM's quantum computing. Who'll be the big winner? Malcolm Berko - Durham Herald Sun [Last Updated On: July 6th, 2017] [Originally Added On: July 6th, 2017]
- Quantum Computers Made Even More Powerful with New microchip generating 'Qudits' - TrendinTech [Last Updated On: July 8th, 2017] [Originally Added On: July 8th, 2017]
- Quantum Computing Record Broken - Wall Street Pit [Last Updated On: July 8th, 2017] [Originally Added On: July 8th, 2017]
- Technique for measuring and controlling electron state is a ... - UCLA Newsroom [Last Updated On: July 9th, 2017] [Originally Added On: July 9th, 2017]
- Quantum cheques could be a forgery-free way to move money - New Scientist [Last Updated On: July 10th, 2017] [Originally Added On: July 10th, 2017]
- Quantum-computer node uses two different ion species - physicsworld.com [Last Updated On: July 10th, 2017] [Originally Added On: July 10th, 2017]
- Quantum Computers vs Bitcoin How Worried Should We Be? - The Merkle [Last Updated On: July 10th, 2017] [Originally Added On: July 10th, 2017]
- Why you might trust a quantum computer with secretseven over ... - Phys.Org [Last Updated On: July 12th, 2017] [Originally Added On: July 12th, 2017]
- Physicists Take Big Step Towards Quantum Computing and ... - Universe Today [Last Updated On: August 1st, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 1st, 2017]
- Quantum Computing Market Worth 495.3 Million USD by 2023 | 08 ... - Markets Insider [Last Updated On: August 10th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 10th, 2017]
- China uses a quantum satellite to transmit potentially unhackable data - CNBC [Last Updated On: August 10th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 10th, 2017]
- Blind quantum computing for everyone - Phys.org - Phys.Org [Last Updated On: August 12th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 12th, 2017]
- Quantum Computing Is Real, and D-Wave Just Open ... - WIRED [Last Updated On: August 12th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 12th, 2017]
- Machine learning tackles quantum error correction - Phys.Org [Last Updated On: August 15th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 15th, 2017]
- Quantum Internet Is 13 Years Away. Wait, What's Quantum Internet? - WIRED [Last Updated On: August 15th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 15th, 2017]
- Physicists Have Made Exotic Quantum States From Light - Futurism [Last Updated On: August 16th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 16th, 2017]
- $495.3 Million Quantum Computing Market 2017 by Revenue Source, Application, Industry, and Geography - Global ... - PR Newswire (press release) [Last Updated On: August 18th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 18th, 2017]
- How quantum mechanics can change computing - The Conversation US [Last Updated On: August 23rd, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 23rd, 2017]
- Introducing Australia's first quantum computing hardware company - Computerworld Australia [Last Updated On: August 23rd, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 23rd, 2017]
- IEEE Approves Standards Project for Quantum Computing ... - insideHPC [Last Updated On: August 23rd, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 23rd, 2017]
- Commonwealth Bank investing in Australia's first quantum computer company - Which-50 (blog) [Last Updated On: August 25th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 25th, 2017]
- How quantum mechanics can change computing - San Francisco ... - San Francisco Chronicle [Last Updated On: August 25th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 25th, 2017]
- Quantum Computing Is Coming at Us Fast, So Here's Everything You Need to Know - ScienceAlert [Last Updated On: August 27th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 27th, 2017]
- Quantum computing event explores the implications for business - Cambridge Network [Last Updated On: August 30th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 30th, 2017]
- Microsoft's Aussie quantum computing lab set to scale up next-gen ... - ARNnet [Last Updated On: September 7th, 2017] [Originally Added On: September 7th, 2017]
- An Entirely New Type of Quantum Computing Has Just Been Invented - Futurism [Last Updated On: September 7th, 2017] [Originally Added On: September 7th, 2017]
- Microsoft just upped its multi-million bet on quantum computing - ZDNet [Last Updated On: September 7th, 2017] [Originally Added On: September 7th, 2017]
- Here's what quantum computing is and why it matters [Last Updated On: October 6th, 2017] [Originally Added On: October 6th, 2017]
- What will you actually use quantum computing for? | ZDNet [Last Updated On: October 11th, 2017] [Originally Added On: October 11th, 2017]
- Quantum Computing | Intel Newsroom [Last Updated On: October 13th, 2017] [Originally Added On: October 13th, 2017]
- Intel Takes First Steps To Universal Quantum Computing [Last Updated On: October 13th, 2017] [Originally Added On: October 13th, 2017]
- Qudits: The Real Future of Quantum Computing? - IEEE Spectrum [Last Updated On: October 13th, 2017] [Originally Added On: October 13th, 2017]
- quantum computing - engadget.com [Last Updated On: October 13th, 2017] [Originally Added On: October 13th, 2017]
- Quantum computing - news.microsoft.com [Last Updated On: November 1st, 2017] [Originally Added On: November 1st, 2017]
- IBM's processor pushes quantum computing ... - engadget.com [Last Updated On: November 16th, 2017] [Originally Added On: November 16th, 2017]
- Yale Professors Race Google and IBM to the First Quantum ... [Last Updated On: November 16th, 2017] [Originally Added On: November 16th, 2017]
- Quantum Computing Is the Next Big Security Risk | WIRED [Last Updated On: December 8th, 2017] [Originally Added On: December 8th, 2017]
- Microsoft offers developers a preview of its quantum ... [Last Updated On: December 12th, 2017] [Originally Added On: December 12th, 2017]
- New silicon structure opens the gate to quantum computers [Last Updated On: December 14th, 2017] [Originally Added On: December 14th, 2017]
- Quantum Computing Explained | What is Quantum Computing? [Last Updated On: December 21st, 2017] [Originally Added On: December 21st, 2017]
- What is Quantum Computing? | SAP News Center [Last Updated On: December 23rd, 2017] [Originally Added On: December 23rd, 2017]
- Is Quantum Computing an Existential Threat to Blockchain ... [Last Updated On: December 25th, 2017] [Originally Added On: December 25th, 2017]
- IBM puts its quantum computer to work in relaxing, nerdy ASMR ... [Last Updated On: January 8th, 2018] [Originally Added On: January 8th, 2018]
- Quantum computing is going to change the world. Here's what ... [Last Updated On: January 8th, 2018] [Originally Added On: January 8th, 2018]
- The Era of Quantum Computing Is Here. Outlook: Cloudy ... [Last Updated On: January 26th, 2018] [Originally Added On: January 26th, 2018]
- What is quantum computing? - Definition from WhatIs.com [Last Updated On: February 5th, 2018] [Originally Added On: February 5th, 2018]
- Senate bills would make quantum computing a priority [Last Updated On: June 10th, 2018] [Originally Added On: June 10th, 2018]
- Two Quantum Computing Bills Are Coming To Congress [Last Updated On: July 5th, 2018] [Originally Added On: July 5th, 2018]
- Quantum Computing Market Research Report- Forecast 2022 | MRFR [Last Updated On: August 1st, 2018] [Originally Added On: August 1st, 2018]
- What Is Quantum Computing? The Complete WIRED Guide | WIRED [Last Updated On: August 22nd, 2018] [Originally Added On: August 22nd, 2018]
- Quantum Computing | USRA [Last Updated On: August 30th, 2018] [Originally Added On: August 30th, 2018]
- The quantum computing race the US cant afford to lose [Last Updated On: September 3rd, 2018] [Originally Added On: September 3rd, 2018]
- The reality of quantum computing could be just three years ... [Last Updated On: September 12th, 2018] [Originally Added On: September 12th, 2018]
- US takes first step toward a quantum computing workforce ... [Last Updated On: September 17th, 2018] [Originally Added On: September 17th, 2018]
- China bet big on quantum computing. Now the ... - money.cnn.com [Last Updated On: September 17th, 2018] [Originally Added On: September 17th, 2018]
- China bet big on quantum computing. Now the US races to ... [Last Updated On: October 26th, 2018] [Originally Added On: October 26th, 2018]
- A new type of quantum computer has smashed every record ... [Last Updated On: December 21st, 2018] [Originally Added On: December 21st, 2018]
- IBM unveils its first commercial quantum computer [Last Updated On: January 9th, 2019] [Originally Added On: January 9th, 2019]
- IBM thinks outside of the lab, puts quantum computer in a box [Last Updated On: January 11th, 2019] [Originally Added On: January 11th, 2019]
- Quantum Computing | The MIT Press [Last Updated On: January 11th, 2019] [Originally Added On: January 11th, 2019]
- CES 2019: IBM's Q System One Is the Rock Star Quantum ... [Last Updated On: January 13th, 2019] [Originally Added On: January 13th, 2019]