award
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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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Anderson named James P. Gordon Memorial Speaker
From the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: Q-NEXT collaborator and UIUC Assistant Professor Chris Anderson is named the James P. Gordon Memorial Speaker by Optica. Read More
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Professor Laura Gagliardi receives prestigious Schrödinger Medal
From the University of Chicago: The World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists names UChicago's Laura Gagliardi the recipient of the 2026 Schrödinger Medal. One of the field’s highest distinctions, the award recognizes Gagliardi’s “seminal work in multireference electronic-structure theory and its transformative applications in catalysis, carbon capture, and water harvesting.” Read More
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Optica names Jelena Vuckovic the 2026 R.W. Wood Prize recipient
From Optica: Optica has selected Jelena Vuckovic, Stanford University, as the 2026 recipient of the R.W. Wood Prize for pioneering contributions to integrated photonics, foundational work in quantum photonics, and the breakthrough development of a practical photonic inverse design. Read More
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Three Illinois faculty named Sloan Foundation fellows
From the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: Q-NEXT collaborator Jacob Covey of UIUC is recognized for his work in quantum physics, quantum communications and quantum information by studying atoms with tweezers made of focused laser beams. Read More
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Two UChicago PME researchers earn prestigious Sloan Fellowships
From the University of Chicago: The award recognizes Q-NEXT collaborator Peter Maurer of the University of Chicago for “outstanding promise” at the intersection of quantum engineering and biophotonics, developing new types of quantum sensors to study biological systems. Read More
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Public Quantum Network receives inaugural award from World Quantum Day
From the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: The Public Quantum Network is awarded the Continental Quantum City Prize for North & Central America at the closing ceremony of the United Nations International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. Read More
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Tiancheng Song earns DOE Early Career award
Tiancheng Song of the University of Wisconsin–Madison wins a DOE Early Career Research Program award to explore superconductors for next-generation quantum devices. Read More
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7 teams win funding in first year of Scialog: Quantum Matter and Information
UIUC’s Elizabeth Goldschmidt and her team are awarded funding for quantum research in the inaugural year of Scialog: Quantum Matter and Information, an initiative to promote broader interactions among different sectors of the quantum science community. Read More
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Mark Saffman awarded 2026 APS Ramsey Prize
From the University of Wisconsin–Madison: Mark Saffman wins the Ramsey Prize “for seminal developments of quantum information processing with neutral atoms that allow the investigation of many-body problems that are intractable by classical computing.” 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