Institute of Optical Science advances with $4 million NSF quantum award
Key Takeaways
- Phase 2 adds $4M to the $1M pilot award, enabling the team to design connectable quantum photonic chips for field-ready, lab-grade measurements.
- If successful, the project will advance to phase 3, implementation, scaling into a $55M NSF quantum center to prototype field-deployable quantum photonic chips.
- Four members of the Institute for Optical Science and Department of Physics at The Ohio State University are part of a University of Michigan-led team which includes partners at U.S. and international universities, industry, and government labs.
Four members of the Institute for Optical Science (IOS) and the Department of Physics at The Ohio State University are part of a University of Michigan-led team that has advanced to the second phase of the National Science Foundation's National Quantum Virtual Laboratory (NQVL) competition.
Following a successful $1 million pilot award, the Quantum Photonic Integration and Deployment (QuPID) team has been selected to receive a Phase 2 award through the NSF National Quantum Virtual Laboratory program. The team will receive $4 million over two years as it continues competing to become a future NSF quantum center with potential funding of up to $55 million.
The NSF announced five new Phase 2 design awards this year, joining four projects selected previously and bringing the total number of active NQVL design projects nationwide to nine. Ohio State researchers are involved in two of those projects, including the University of Michigan-led QuPID effort and the Ohio State-led Distributed-Entanglement Quantum Sensing of Chemical Properties (DQS-CP) project, which also received a $4 million Phase 2 award.
Led by University of Michigan Professor Mackillo Kira in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, QuPID is developing robust, plug-and-play quantum photonic chips that harness the quantum properties of light to perform laboratory-grade measurements in real-world environments. Working with leading industry partners, the team aims to bring quantum sensing technologies out of specialized research laboratories and into practical commercial devices.
"Our guidestar use case is quantum navigation," said Kira, the University of Michigan principal investigator. "We will design quantum chips that let users determine their position with extreme precision for far longer than classical devices, while being compact, affordable and rugged enough for everyday vehicles and future Mars missions."
The team is focused on developing integrated quantum photonic technologies for applications including GPS-free navigation and advanced quantum measurement systems capable of observing electronic and chemical processes with unprecedented precision. These technologies could enable navigation in environments where GPS is unavailable, including underwater, in deep space, and on future lunar missions.
The IOS team includes Nobel Laureate Pierre Agostini, Professor Alexandra Landsman, Associate Professor Michael Chini, and IOS Director and Professor Louis DiMauro, all members of IOS and the Department of Physics.
“OSU's world-class standing in the field of ultrafast and attosecond science positioned us as an attractive partner with our U Michigan colleagues," said Lou DiMauro, the Director of the Institiute for Optical Science. "Clearly, the OSU preeminence is highlighted by the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics to OSU Professor Emeritus Pierre Agostini."
Mike Chini, who serves on the IOS Executive Board, commented that, "at Ohio State, we’ve pioneered measurement techniques that can capture events that happen in a quintillionth of a second—an attosecond. By bringing our expertise in attosecond metrology to the QuPID project, we are helping to take the technology out of the lab and into the real world."
A major focus of the current phase is the development of scalable quantum photonic components that can be integrated onto chip-based platforms. During Phase 1, the QuPID team demonstrated significant advances in quantum photonics materials and quantum light generation, including progress toward creating compact devices capable of producing squeezed light, a quantum resource that enables measurements beyond conventional limits.
"This effort builds on long-standing, pioneering efforts with our partners at Ohio State University, Purdue, Harvard and Stanford," said Steve Cundiff, University of Michigan professor of physics and co-investigator on the project. "The Quantum Research Institute has been instrumental in bringing the QuPID team together and accelerating joint work across institutions."
A key objective of the NSF program is to accelerate the transition of quantum technologies from university laboratories to commercial applications while educating and developing the future quantum workforce. The project includes collaborations with industry, government laboratories, universities, educators, and public outreach partners to advance both technological development and workforce training.
Beyond the University of Michigan and Ohio State, the QuPID team includes researchers from U-M LSA, Purdue University, Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Colorado, and the University of Southern California. Participating industry researchers hail from Honeywell, MONSTR Sense Technologies, TOPTICA Photonics, General Motors, Toyota, MITRE, Quantum Opus, and Raytheon. The Air Force Research Laboratory and NASA Glenn Research Center are represented, as well as international collaborators from the University of Regensburg in Germany and Polytechnique Montréal in Canada.
If selected for the final phase of the competition, the QuPID team would receive up to $50 million over five years to develop and demonstrate field-deployable quantum technologies capable of bringing quantum-enabled measurements into real-world applications.
