In the News
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Most precise atomic clock shows Einstein’s general relativity is right
From New Scientist: Q-NEXT collaborator Shimon Kolkowitz and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have produced a new atomic clock setup that can achieve a high level of precision, losing just 1 second every 300 billion years. Read More
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memq wins George Shultz Innovation Fund Award
From the University of Chicago: memq, a startup founded by the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and Argonne National Laboratory researchers, was recently selected to receive the George Shultz Innovation Fund award. memq is developing an integrated quantum photonics platform that will enable quantum communication between computers at distances orders of magnitude greater than what is available today. The team includes Q-NEXT Chief Technology Officer Supratik Guha. Read More
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U of C researchers make quantum breakthrough
From Crain's Chicago Business: University of Chicago researchers say they’ve made a breakthrough that might help bring quantum computing closer to reality. Researchers achieved a record time for memory, or “coherence,” in quantum bits, or qubits, of more than 5 seconds. Scientists are trying to harness quantum mechanics for the next generation of computing. One of the challenges is that particles maintain their quantum states, and their ability to store information, only briefly. Read More
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The race to build a fault-tolerant superconducting quantum computer
From IEEE Spectrum: Amazon, Google, and IBM are all pursuing different strategies to reduce error rates. Q-NEXT collaborator Oskar Painter of Caltech and team find they can 'make cat qubits that are highly resistant to bit flip, where a qubit flips from one state to another, one of two main sources of error a superconducting qubit can have.' Read More
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What is a quantum network?
From Symmetry: As we step into the quantum age, here are four things to know about quantum networks. Q-NEXT collaborator Emilio Nanni of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University weighs in. Read More
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The quantum squeeze
From Symmetry: A technique from the newest generation of quantum sensors is helping scientists to use the limitations of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle to their advantage. Q-NEXT collaborator Kent Irwin helped develop the transition-edge sensor, a progenitor to the quantum squeezing technique. Read More
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More than one way to make a qubit
From Symmetry: Q-NEXT collaborators F. Joseph Heremans and Paul Welander appear in this Symmetry Magazine article on the various ways to make a qubit. Read More
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Computer scientists eliminate pesky quantum computations
From Quanta: For years, intermediate measurements made it hard to quantify the complexity of quantum algorithms. Quanta Magazine unpacks a 2020 result by Q-NEXT collaborator Bill Fefferman and team that establishes that those measurements aren’t necessary after all. Read More
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First class of quantum PhDs graduate from Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering
From the University of Chicago: The first class of quantum science and engineering Ph.D. students graduated last month from the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, representing one of the first cohorts in the nation to complete a Ph.D. dedicated specifically to this rapidly growing field. Read More
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Quantum computing interconnect, memory and other engineering advances
From The Post-Quantum World: Technologies like interconnects and improved memory for repeaters will enable quantum computers to accelerate in power and connectivity in the future. The U.S. Department of Energy is focused on strengthening the nation’s leadership position in the quantum arms race, but the technologies will benefit all areas of the industry. Q-NEXT CTO Supratik Guha chats with Konstantinos Karagiannis on Protiviti's The Post-Quantum World podcast. Read More
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David Awschalom wins global Breakthrough of the Year award
David Awschalom, Q-NEXT Chief Science Officer and the Liew Family Professor of Quantum Engineering and Physics at the University of Chicago, received the prestigious Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year in Physical Sciences for a pioneering body of work that broke the wall between quantum technology, molecules, and proteins. Read More
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Helium lifts new quantum computing concept
A team led by Jacob Covey, who is part of Q-NEXT and is an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago, laid out a new concept that could turn helium’s light weight into the next generation of quantum computers. The design relies on helium-3, an isotope with different quantum properties than the helium-4 used to cool MRI machines and fill party balloons. Once built, the computer could use high-powered lasers as “optical tweezers” to capture and control individual atoms of helium. Read More
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Researchers make materials that support quantum technology
Researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who are part of Q-NEXT are engineering material systems that support quantum technology. Chris Anderson and his team are developing materials for quantum transduction — the conversion of quantum information from one form to another. Elizabeth Goldschmidt, Daniel Shoemaker, and colleagues are developing quantum memory technology that stores quantum information for extended periods of time. Read More
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Silicon Chip Offers New Way to Probe Quantum Materials in Strong Magnetic Fields
Scientists have created a silicon chip that can detect the electrical behavior of very small materials by using very high-frequency waves. The chip is made only from silicon and other non-superconducting materials and still performs very well when cooled from room temperature down to about 4 Kelvin. Read More
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Making quantum bits ready to use again much sooner
Scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Intel have found that a simple electrical pulse can quickly push a quantum dot qubit out of a latched state and return it to its starting condition with very high reliability. Read More
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Q-NEXT-developed open-source software receives 2026 R&D 100 award
SeQUeNCe, a free, open-source software developed by Argonne scientists with Q-NEXT support, is one of seven Argonne projects that received a 2026 R&D 100 Award. The SeQUeNCe software lets researchers test how quantum networks might work before building them. Read More
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Researchers generate spontaneous magnons that synchronize with external signals
Researchers at Argonne and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign demonstrate a method for generating stable ripples in magnetic materials called magnons. The work opens avenues for information processing in microelectronics and quantum devices. Read More
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Uncovering the hidden disorder in silicon quantum computers
From the U.S. Department of Energy: Q-NEXT researchers map the variation in materials to the atom level to scale up silicon qubits Read More
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Color centers in high-purity diamond
Researchers mapped how electron irradiation makes defects inside diamond, finding that creating more vacancies does not always produce more NV centers. Too many vacancies can form unwanted defects. This result can inform advances in quantum sensing. Read More
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Containing multitudes: SLAC scientist collaborates to create scalable qubits
At SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Q-NEXT collaborator Shannon Harvey develops quantum dots — a mass-producible type of qubit. Driven by curiosity about nature and how things work, Harvey draws on her facility for working at the nanoscale. Read More