(December 19, 2022) Last Wednesday, the Department of Energy announced $4.6 Million in awards for the Advanced Scientific Computing Research – Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (ASCR-RENEW) program, whose goal is to increase participation of underrepresented groups in the quantum computing and networking workforce and to increase participation of underrepresented institutions in quantum computing and networking workforce training. This pilot program is intended to leverage ASCR’s unique national laboratory infrastructure and user facilities to provide training and research opportunities for students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty from underrepresented groups and at institutions that are currently underrepresented in the ASCR portfolio such as non-R1 institutions of higher education and minority serving institutions (MSIs), including Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

(October 6, 2022) From October 28-29, 2022, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is hosting a virtual Workshop on Software-Hardware Co-Design for Quantum Computing. This workshop will function as a hub to spur a large, synergistic, and convergent effort for building a common technological ecosystem that quantum-enabled technologies and classical technologies can live together for mutual benefit and progress in the long term. In this workshop, experts from both industry and academia will gather together and discuss the key challenges that need to be addressed for an end-to-end quantum computing infrastructure. In particular, we advocate the importance of taking a computer engineering perspective. We envision that classic computer engineering techniques (at both software and hardware levels) have the potential to enable transformative scientific and industrial progress for quantum computing. The key is to figure out the grand challenges in the new quantum context. This workshop is to help the computer engineering community better understand and focus on these grand challenges rather than incremental changes, form a stronger collaboration, and propose transformative ideas to achieve significant progress in quantum computing. To this end, experts will be invited to get together to report the latest research progress and discuss their visions of the critical challenges that need to be addressed in the near future and how to tackle these challenges in a synergistic manner.

(June 3, 2022) The National Science Foundation, in conjunction with Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM, and Microsoft, is promoting the availability of cloud-based access to quantum-computing platforms to advance research and build capacity in the academic setting. With the Dear Colleague Letter NSF 22-092, NSF’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS), the Directorate for Engineering (ENG), and the Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) notified the research community of their intention to support supplemental funding requests for currently active NSF awards to enable use of these quantum-computing platforms. NSF’s supplemental funding will include support for graduate students as well as fees to work on these hardware and software quantum platforms.

(May 09, 2022) The Laboratory for Physical Sciences (LPS) Qubit Collaboratory (LQC) will be hosting its 2nd Summer of Quantum (SoQ) Short Course. This course is a free 2-week introduction to quantum computing from algorithms to physical implementations for rising undergraduate seniors thru 2nd year graduate students interested in quantum devices and quantum information science. The course is being offered virtually July 25 – August 5, 2022; 12:30-4:30pm EST and the application deadline is June 3, 2022. Click here to learn more and apply.

(January, 18 2022) A new Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for the QC-S5 program, BAA # W911NF-22-S-0006 has been released. The U.S. Army Research Office (ARO), in collaboration with the Laboratory for Physical Sciences (LPS), is soliciting proposals for research in four research topic areas in the field of
gate-based Quantum Computing (QC) in the Solid State with Spin and Superconducting qubit Systems (QC-S5).
The topic areas are as follows:

(October 7, 2021) Earlier this week, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) convened industry stakeholders from across the country to discuss how quantum computers and quantum sensors will benefit American society. Challenges and opportunities for increasing United States competitiveness in this critical industry of the future were also discussed.