Editor’s note: Below is a press release from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy announcing the establishment of five national centers to bring about transformational advances in quantum information science as a part of the U.S. National Quantum Initiative.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermilab has been selected to lead one of the centers, the new Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center. The initiative provides the center funding with the goal of building and deploying a beyond-state-of-the-art quantum computer based on superconducting technologies. The center also will develop new quantum sensors, which could lead to the discovery of the nature of dark matter and other elusive subatomic particles. Total planned DOE funding for the center is $115 million over five years, with $15 million in fiscal year 2020 dollars and outyear funding contingent on congressional appropriations. SQMS will also receive an additional $8 million in matching contributions from center partners.
“We are thankful and honored to have this unique opportunity to be a national center for advancing quantum science and technology,” said SQMS Director Anna Grassellino of Fermilab. “We have a focused mission: build something revolutionary. This center brings together the right expertise and motivation to accomplish that mission.”
The revolutionary leaps in quantum computing and sensing that SQMS aims for will be enabled by a unique multidisciplinary collaboration that includes 20 partners – national laboratories, academic institutions and industry. The collaboration brings together world-leading expertise in all key aspects: from identifying qubits’ quality limitations at the nanometer scale to fabrication and scale-up capabilities into multiqubit quantum computers to the exploration of new applications enabled by quantum computers and sensors.
The Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center institutions include DOE’s Ames Laboratory, Colorado School of Mines, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Goldman Sachs, Illinois Institute of Technology, the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics, Janis Research, Johns Hopkins University, Lockheed Martin, NASA Ames Research Center, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Northwestern University, Rigetti Computing, Stanford University, Temple University, Unitary Fund, University of Arizona, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and University of Padova, Italy.
“Fermilab is excited to host this National Quantum Information Science Research Center and work with this extraordinary network of collaborators,” said Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer. “This initiative aligns with Fermilab and its mission. It will help us answer important particle physics questions, and, at the same time, we will contribute to advancements in quantum information science with our strengths in particle accelerator technologies, such as superconducting radio-frequency devices and cryogenics.”
Read more about the Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center.
Reporters: Photos, graphics and videos are available online.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy announced over $1 billion in awards for the establishment of 12 new artificial intelligence and quantum information science research institutes nationwide.
The $1 billion will go towards NSF-led AI Research Institutes and DOE QIS Research Centers over five years, establishing 12 multidisciplinary and multi-institutional national hubs for research and workforce development in these critical emerging technologies. Together, the institutes will spur cutting-edge innovation, support regional economic growth and advance American leadership in these critical industries of the future.
“Today, the Trump administration is making an unprecedented investment to strengthen American leadership in AI and quantum, and to ensure the nation benefits from these emerging technologies. Built upon the uniquely American free-market approach to technological advancement, these institutes will be world-class hubs for accelerating American innovation and building the 21st-century American workforce,” said U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios.
“Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, the United States is accomplishing yet another milestone in our efforts to strengthen research in AI and quantum. We are proud to announce that over $1 billion in funding will be geared towards that research, a defining achievement as we continue to shape and prepare this great nation for excellence in the industries of the future,” said Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump.
“Today’s announcement captures the very best of our nation’s innovation ecosystem. Through these institutes, the federal government, private sector and academia will come together to drive transformative AI and quantum breakthroughs. This is a significant achievement for the American people and the future of emerging technologies,” said Chris Liddell, White House deputy chief of staff.
“The Department of Energy is a staunch supporter of cutting-edge research to advance quantum information science,” said Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette. “I am proud to lead an agency committed to developing industries of the future by making investments today to accelerate American innovation.”
“NSF’s long history of investment in AI research and workforce development paved the way for many of the breakthrough commercial technologies permeating and driving society today,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “NSF invests more than $500 million in AI research annually. We are supporting seven NSF-led AI Institutes this year, with more to follow, creating hubs for academia, industry and government to collaborate on profound discoveries and develop new capabilities to advance American competitiveness for decades to come.”
“The Department of Energy is proud to be in partnership with a significant breadth of participants to support Quantum Information Science Centers around the country, and by allocating generous contributions from these participants we can continue to further scientific discovery through quantum technologies,” said Undersecretary for Science Paul Dabbar. “Our nation continues to lead in the development of industries of the future, and these five centers will marshal the full strength of our national laboratories, universities and our public and private sector partnerships.”
NSF-led AI Research Institutes
- The National Science Foundation and additional federal partners, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, are awarding $140 million for seven NSF-led AI Research Institutes over five years to accelerate a number of AI R&D areas, such as machine-learning, synthetic manufacturing, precision agriculture and forecasting prediction.
- The NSF-led AI Research Institutes will be hosted by universities across the country, including at the University of Oklahoma at Norman, University of Texas at Austin, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of California at Davis, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Click here for the full list of the NSF-led AI Institutes.
- NSF anticipates additional AI Research Institute awards in the coming years, with more than $300 million in total investment toward these national hubs expected by next summer.
- This builds upon last month’s announcement of $75 million for three new Quantum Leap Challenges Institutes awarded by NSF.
The National Quantum Initiative provides the new Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center funding with the goal of building and deploying a beyond-state-of-the-art quantum computer based on superconducting technologies. The center also will develop new quantum sensors, which could lead to the discovery of the nature of dark matter and other elusive subatomic particles. Photo: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab
DOE Quantum Information Science Research Centers
- To establish the QIS Research Centers, the Department of Energy is awarding $625 million over five years to DOE’s Argonne, Brookhaven, Fermi, Oak Ridge and Lawrence Berkeley national laboratories, subject to appropriations. Each QIS Center incorporates a collaborative research team spanning multiple scientific and engineering disciplines and multiple institutions.
- This award was met with $340 million in contributions from the private sector and academia.
- The centers will focus on a range of key QIS research topics including quantum networking, sensing, computing and materials manufacturing. Click here for the full list of DOE’s QIS centers.
- The National Quantum Initiative Act, bipartisan legislation signed by President Trump in 2018, called for the creation of research centers nationwide to accelerate foundational QIS research and development.
Earlier this year, President Trump committed to doubling investment in AI and QIS research and development over two years. Click here to view the latest report illustrating the administration’s progress in delivering on this request.
One of the goals of the Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center is to build a beyond-state-of-the-art quantum computer based on superconducting technologies. The center also will develop new quantum sensors, which could lead to the discovery of the nature of dark matter and other elusive subatomic particles.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermilab has been selected to lead one of five national centers to bring about transformational advances in quantum information science as a part of the U.S. National Quantum Initiative, announced the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy today.
The initiative provides the new Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center funding with the goal of building and deploying a beyond-state-of-the-art quantum computer based on superconducting technologies. The center also will develop new quantum sensors, which could lead to the discovery of the nature of dark matter and other elusive subatomic particles. Total planned DOE funding for the center is $115 million over five years, with $15 million in fiscal year 2020 dollars and outyear funding contingent on congressional appropriations. SQMS will also receive an additional $8 million in matching contributions from center partners.
The SQMS Center is part of a $625 million federal program to facilitate and foster quantum innovation in the United States. The 2018 National Quantum Initiative Act called for a long-term, large-scale commitment of U.S. scientific and technological resources to quantum science.
The revolutionary leaps in quantum computing and sensing that SQMS aims for will be enabled by a unique multidisciplinary collaboration that includes 20 partners – national laboratories, academic institutions and industry. The collaboration brings together world-leading expertise in all key aspects: from identifying qubits’ quality limitations at the nanometer scale to fabrication and scale-up capabilities into multiqubit quantum computers to the exploration of new applications enabled by quantum computers and sensors.
“The breadth of the SQMS physics, materials science, device fabrication and characterization technology combined with the expertise in large-scale integration capabilities by the SQMS Center is unprecedented for superconducting quantum science and technology,” said SQMS Deputy Director James Sauls of Northwestern University. “As part of the network of National QIS Research centers, SQMS will contribute to U.S. leadership in quantum science for the years to come.”
SQMS researchers are developing long-coherence-time qubits based on Rigetti Computing’s state-of-the-art quantum processors. Image: Rigetti Computing
At the heart of SQMS research will be solving one of the most pressing problems in quantum information science: the length of time that a qubit, the basic element of a quantum computer, can maintain information, also called quantum coherence. Understanding and mitigating sources of decoherence that limit performance of quantum devices is critical to engineering in next-generation quantum computers and sensors.
“Unless we address and overcome the issue of quantum system decoherence, we will not be able to build quantum computers that solve new complex and important problems. The same applies to quantum sensors with the range of sensitivity needed to address long-standing questions in many fields of science,” said SQMS Center Director Anna Grassellino of Fermilab. “Overcoming this crucial limitation would allow us to have a great impact in the life sciences, biology, medicine, and national security, and enable measurements of incomparable precision and sensitivity in basic science.”
The SQMS Center’s ambitious goals in computing and sensing are driven by Fermilab’s achievement of world-leading coherence times in components called superconducting cavities, which were developed for particle accelerators used in Fermilab’s particle physics experiments. Researchers have expanded the use of Fermilab cavities into the quantum regime.
“We have the most coherent – by a factor of more than 200 – 3-D superconducting cavities in the world, which will be turned into quantum processors with unprecedented performance by combining them with Rigetti’s state-of-the-art planar structures,” said Fermilab scientist Alexander Romanenko, SQMS technology thrust leader and Fermilab SRF program manager. “This long coherence would not only enable qubits to be long-lived, but it would also allow them to be all connected to each other, opening qualitatively new opportunities for applications.”
The SQMS Center’s goals in computing and sensing are driven by Fermilab’s achievement of world-leading coherence times in components called superconducting cavities, which were developed for particle accelerators used in Fermilab’s particle physics experiments. Photo: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab
To advance the coherence even further, SQMS collaborators will launch a materials-science investigation of unprecedented scale to gain insights into the fundamental limiting mechanisms of cavities and qubits, working to understand the quantum properties of superconductors and other materials used at the nanoscale and in the microwave regime.
“Now is the time to harness the strengths of the DOE laboratories and partners to identify the underlying mechanisms limiting quantum devices in order to push their performance to the next level for quantum computing and sensing applications,” said SQMS Chief Engineer Matt Kramer, Ames Laboratory.
Northwestern University, Ames Laboratory, Fermilab, Rigetti Computing, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics and several universities are partnering to contribute world-class materials science and superconductivity expertise to target sources of decoherence.
SQMS partner Rigetti Computing will provide crucial state-of-the-art qubit fabrication and full stack quantum computing capabilities required for building the SQMS quantum computer.
“By partnering with world-class experts, our work will translate ground-breaking science into scalable superconducting quantum computing systems and commercialize capabilities that will further the energy, economic and national security interests of the United States,” said Rigetti Computing CEO Chad Rigetti.
SQMS will also partner with the NASA Ames Research Center quantum group, led by SQMS Chief Scientist Eleanor Rieffel. Their strengths in quantum algorithms, programming and simulation will be crucial to use the quantum processors developed by the SQMS Center.
“The Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics has been successfully collaborating with Fermilab for more than 40 years and is excited to be a member of the extraordinary SQMS team,” said INFN President Antonio Zoccoli. “With its strong know-how in detector development, cryogenics and environmental measurements, including the Gran Sasso national laboratories, the largest underground laboratory in the world devoted to fundamental physics, INFN looks forward to exciting joint progress in fundamental physics and in quantum science and technology.”
“Fermilab is excited to host this National Quantum Information Science Research Center and work with this extraordinary network of collaborators,” said Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer. “This initiative aligns with Fermilab and its mission. It will help us answer important particle physics questions, and, at the same time, we will contribute to advancements in quantum information science with our strengths in particle accelerator technologies, such as superconducting radio-frequency devices and cryogenics.”
“We are thankful and honored to have this unique opportunity to be a national center for advancing quantum science and technology,” Grassellino said. “We have a focused mission: build something revolutionary. This center brings together the right expertise and motivation to accomplish that mission.”
The Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center at Fermilab is supported by the DOE Office of Science.
Fermilab is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit science.energy.gov.