CU Boulder Announces New $25M Quantum Science, Engineering Center

BOULDER, CO — The National Science Foundation is awarding the University of Colorado Boulder $25 million to launch a new quantum science and engineering research center, officials announced Tuesday.

Led by physicist Jun Ye, the new center has been named Quantum Systems through Entangled Science and Engineering, a "nod to its focus on building close ties between scientists and engineers," university officials said.

The new center, which will be CU Boulder's third National Science Foundation facility, will work with 11 other research organizations in the United States and abroad. The center will also "focus on educating and training the young people who will become the quantum workforce of the future," officials said.

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The center will work with its partner organizations to study "grand challenges," which include how exotic quantum phenomena, such as quantum entanglement, will advance new frontiers in measurement science; how quantum sensing can help researchers to discover new fundamental physics; and how researchers can turn those advancements into real-world technologies, officials said.

“Imagine if we can build robust quantum systems that can go outside of our labs, that can completely change how we sense the physical world, how we navigate and how we communicate with each other,” Ye said in a statement.

“We’re asking how we can take advantage of recent advances in quantum physics to actually solve useful problems for society.”

Ye, his students and his colleagues have spent decades researching what are called "atomic clocks" — devices that use networks of strontium atoms to track the passage of time with "previously unimaginable accuracy," officials said. The clocks could also become precise navigational or scientific sensors, capable of detecting even minute shifts in Earth’s gravitational pull, Ye said.

Ye is a fellow at JILA, a science research institute on the CU Boulder campus.

>> Read more about the new CU Boulder center here.