Penn Engineering Groups Awarded NSF Grants to Work Toward ‘Quantum Leap’

One group will design robust, integrated quantum memory devices based on defects in diamond, and the other group will develop materials to encode and decode quantum information in single photons. These technologies will be part of the safest and most secure information network ever seen.

Two teams in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have received NSF grants for research in quantum information science, which explores how to send and store secure information at the nanometer level. (Photo: Scott Spitzer)

The National Science Foundation has awarded two of eight nationwide Research Advanced by Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering (RAISE) grants to teams at the School of Engineering and Applied Science for their proposed quantum information science research.

The RAISE Engineering Quantum Integrated Platforms (EQuIP) grants are designed to propel advances in quantum information science, which aims to harness the inherent quantum-mechanical properties of light and matter for new technologies. The EQuIP program focuses especially on quantum communication, which explores how information can be condensed, sent, and stored. In 2016, the NSF unveiled the “quantum leap” as one of the big ideas at the forefront of science and engineering, and these projects aim to turn these ideas into reality.

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