IQUIST

NSF-funded QuSTEAM program awarded $5 million to broaden quantum science education for undergraduates

IBM and The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign plan to launch a large-scale collaboration designed to increase access to technology education and skill development, and to combine the strengths of academia and the industrial sector to spur breakthroughs in emerging areas of technology. Specifically, the planned collaboration will focus on the rapidly growing areas of hybrid cloud and AI, quantum information science and technology, accelerated materials discovery, and sustainability to accelerate the discovery of solutions to complex global challenges.  

Nature, at the scale of atoms, is governed by quantum mechanics. While we can peek into this realm with powerful microscopes, much of it remains obscured because of heat. Signature quantum features like superposition and entanglement are extremely delicate when it comes to temperature changes — they dissipate like water droplets on a hot summer day. For scientists, this presents a conundrum: devices that harness the elusive world of quantum could revolutionize technology but attempts to reach into that world are riddled with obstacles.

Real-world materials are usually messier than the idealized scenarios found in textbooks. Imperfections can add complications and even limit a material’s usefulness. To get around this, scientists routinely strive to remove defects and dirt entirely, pushing materials closer to perfection. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have turned this problem around and shown that for some materials defects could act as a probe for interesting physics, rather than a nuisance.