There is a pressing need in Quantum Information Science & Technology (QIST) for new and broader talent. One innovation may be in developing approaches to teaching QIST concepts at multiple levels of expertise (but especially undergraduate to mid-career) to engineers, computer scientists, and physicists. Research proposals are sought in innovative collaborative learning concepts for quantum information science, to include the methodologies, pedagogy, and essential principles that effectively leverage classroom and laboratory experiences to train a diverse quantum workforce of the future. These projects should focus on methods applicable to higher education for the training and retraining of technical individuals that have a range of experiences and knowledge. Practical implementations coupled with evaluation of efficacy are highly desired. Some examples of research activities may include:

On March 2, 2021, the Department of Defense (DoD), through the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)), launched a $7.5 million Center of Excellence in Advanced Quantum Sensing (COE-AQS) at Delaware State University, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU). The COE-AQS will stimulate research and innovation leading to the development of novel quantum sensing technologies and methodologies. The COE-AQS research will focus on realizing entanglement-enhanced quantum sensing in the form of spin-squeezing in atomic clocks and magnetometers using cold atom platforms. The Center was awarded through the OUSD(R&E)’s HBCU and Minority-Serving Institutions (MSI) Research and Education Program and is administered by the Army Research Laboratory.

Next Tuesday, April 27; 1-2:30 PM ET NSF will hold a webinar addressing some of the programs managed by EHR that are now opened to Quantum Information Science and Engineering. This activity is related to the Dear Colleague Letter “Advancing Quantum Education and Workforce Development” :

The U.S. Army Research Office (ARO) in collaboration with the Laboratory for Physical Sciences (LPS) is soliciting proposals for research in the next New and Emerging Qubit Science and Technology (nextNEQST) program. nextNEQST focuses on qubit systems that explore new operating regimes and environments, fundamentally new methods of fabrication, and new methods of design, control, or operation. These explorations should have in mind the development of quantum computation where the novel properties of these systems create significant advantages in coherence, fabrication, and/or qubit operation over current state-of-the-art qubits.

In high-end 21^st century communications, information travels in the form of a stream of light pulses typically traveling through fiber optic cables. Each pulse can be as faint as a single photon, the smallest possible unit (quantum) of light. The speed at which such systems can operate depends critically on how fast and how accurately detectors on the receiving end can discriminate and process those photons.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Today the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced a plan to provide $25 million for basic research toward the development of a quantum internet.

Today the National Security Agency’s Laboratory for Physical Sciences (LPS) launched the LPS Qubit Collaboratory (LQC), a Quantum Information Science research center in support of the U.S. National Quantum Initiative. The LQC offers a mechanism for collaborative research between LPS and academia, industry, FFRDCs, and Government Laboratories. The mission of the LQC is to:

A recent Funding Announcement Opportunity (FOA) was released for Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 Department of Defense Multidisciplinary Research Program of the University Research Initiative (MURI) awards. This year’s MURI announcement has several opportunities that touch on quantum sensing, quantum communication and quantum computing.

The State of Quantum

Although universal fault-tolerant quantum computers – with millions of physical quantum bits (or qubits) – may be a decade or two away, quantum computing research continues apace. It has been hypothesized that quantum computers will one day revolutionize information processing across a host of military and civilian applications from pharmaceuticals discovery, to advanced batteries, to machine learning, to cryptography. A key missing element in the race toward fault-tolerant quantum systems, however, is meaningful metrics to quantify how useful or transformative large quantum computers will actually be once they exist.