Scientists and engineers, early-career and established researchers, experts in industry and academia — all Q-NEXT collaborators contribute to the center’s mission to develop the science and technology for controlling and distributing quantum information, enabling pivotal discoveries and U.S. competitiveness in quantum science and engineering.

Learn about some of the people who make up Q-NEXT:

Randall Goldsmith

Light. Matter. Interactions. The pithy trio of terms belies the wide range of science explored by Randall Goldsmith, a professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. There, he directs nature’s smallest constituents to follow his cues on an atom-scale stage.

Break Through Tech Chicago students

Through the Break Through Tech Chicago initiative, six undergraduates at the University of Illinois Chicago write the playbook for a process that will help accelerate the creation of materials that host qubits — specifically, membranes made of diamond.

Open Quantum Initiative fellows 2024

Bonde Borca, Carissa Ellen Kiehl, Wanda Lindquist and Zoe Denn Zuro advance quantum materials research at Argonne through the OQI Undergraduate Fellowship, fueling their excitement to join the quantum workforce.

Nitin Samarth

Pennsylvania State University’s Nitin Samarth is helping grow the capabilities of the Argonne Quantum Foundry. He’s also building a library of atom-scale materials for quantum technologies — and he’s sharing it with everyone.

Edward Schmitt

Facilities engineers like Edward Schmitt play a critical role in advancing scientific discoveries. For nearly two decades, Schmitt has maintained equipment and installed devices for materials scientists. Now, he’s establishing new infrastructure and systems to propel quantum research.

Chloe Washabaugh

UChicago grad student Chloe Washabaugh creates high-performance qubits from designer molecules. Not only is she expanding the applications of quantum devices, but she’s also working to attract a diverse audience to quantum.

Marco Pistoia

Marco Pistoia, head of JPMorgan Chase’s Global Technology Applied Research Center, leads a team of superstar scientists who are advancing quantum information technologies to improve financial portfolios and protect finance customers from cyberattacks.

Jason Orcutt

A principal research scientist at IBM Quantum, Orcutt coordinates the development of long-range quantum interconnects, which link devices separated by meters to kilometers. He also provides an industry perspective on quantum simulation research at Q-NEXT.

Gregory Grant

Gregory Grant, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, uses the Argonne Quantum Foundry and a molecular beam epitaxy machine to grow different types of crystals that can eventually be used in devices for quantum memory and quantum communication.

Yuri Alexeev

Argonne scientist Yuri Alexeev uses supercomputers at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility to develop quantum algorithms and simulate quantum computers, which are expected to be able to solve today’s most intractable problems.

Jessica Barbosa Martins

Argonne postdoc Jessica Barbosa Martins controls the phenomena of quantum tunneling to develop materials for quantum communication. These materials will support quantum technologies that can securely carry information over long distances.

Stephen Gray

Argonne scientist Stephen Gray uses high-performance supercomputers to simulate the properties of materials that can exist in two opposite conditions at the same time and how they can interact and become quantum-entangled with one another.

Jennifer Choy

Jennifer Choy of the University of Wisconsin–Madison is creating technologies to boost the performance of quantum sensors. Her work could lead to ultraprecise devices for navigation and for probing minuscule changes in a material’s electromagnetic field.

Katie Sautter

In graduate school, Argonne postdoctoral researcher Katie Sautter learned to master a machine that builds bits of matter one atomic layer at a time. Now she wields her considerable skills inventing materials for quantum communication devices at Q-NEXT.

Thaddeus Ladd

A co-design engineer within Q-NEXT, Thaddeus Ladd of HRL Laboratories helps advance new materials for quantum science, develops simulations for quantum networks, and provides the perspective needed to assess how partners can best support the Q-NEXT mission.

Elizabeth Goldschmidt

Goldschmidt’s lab is a playground for controlling particles of light to build new ways to store quantum information. A professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, she’s helping develop the quantum communication technologies of the future.

Jeanette Roberts

Intel’s Jeanette Roberts is helming the effort to install the company’s first quantum computing test bed at Argonne. Building a quantum computer is one of the biggest challenges of her career. And when she isn’t developing quantum devices, she’s either scuba diving or planning to.

Open Quantum Initiative fellows 2022

Alejandro Aponte, Cody Castle, Ariadna Fernandez, Adrian Portales and Tiarna Wise conducted Q-NEXT research in 2022 as part of the Open Quantum Initiative Undergraduate Fellowship. Their work spanned quantum computing, communication, materials and sensing.

Antia Lamas-Linares

Antia Lamas-Linares of AWS is working to link the globe through quantum networks. She and her team explore how to store, control, compute and transmit photon-encoded information in ways that can’t be achieved through traditional computing and communication.

Feng Pan

Stanford University’s Feng Pan creates materials with sculptural features that manipulate light to encode information. His metamaterials are designed to produce chiral polaritons, particles can interact with one another in ways that are critical for quantum information storage.

Bo Peng

Bo Peng of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is pioneering new ways to beat down the noise in quantum computers. A researcher studying hybrid classical-quantum approaches to computing, he’s exploring different ways to reduce error in quantum devices.