Evan Lerner
NSF Awards $1.98 Million Grant to Penn-led Team for Quantum Circuit Research
In 2016, the National Science Foundation (NSF) released a list of 10 Big Ideas — areas where innovative research could help catapult the country’s future forward. Now, in 2019, the NSF has begun enabling those ideas by awarding grants to bright minds in fields like engineering, including a $1.98 million grant received by a Penn-led team to work on the NSF’s Quantum Leap initiative.
Ritesh Agarwal, professor of Materials Science and Engineering, is heading the research team and is working with Liang Feng, assistant professor of Materials Science and Engineering and of Electrical and Systems Engineering, as well as researchers from the City College of New York and Texas A&M University.
The team will be working to engineer proof-of-concept quantum circuits that incorporate two-dimensional quantum materials. Photonic computing, an area in which Agarwal has previous research experience, will also be an integral part of their circuit system. The quantum photonic circuits to be designed for this project could eventually be incorporated into quantum computers that will revolutionize computing, sensing, and communication technologies.
Agarwal and Feng are also collaborating on another NSF project that is part of the Quantum Leap initiative. They are one of eight teams selected for its Research Advanced by Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering — Engineering Quantum Integrated Platforms (RAISE-EQuIP) grant program.