Quantum Revolution

More than 100 years ago, scientists began to understand that at the subatomic level, the world worked very differently. The field of quantum mechanics was born, and now researchers are harnessing the abilities of quantum particles to build the next generation of quantum computers, sensors, and communication networks.

The Chicago area is at the heart of a lot of that research, and UIC’s electrical and computer engineering department is quickly establishing itself as a leader in addressing all aspects of quantum computing: from conducting research on the latest software, hardware, and materials to educating the department’s graduate and undergraduate students to be the quantum workforce of the future.

“Quantum computing has the potential to completely revolutionize how we interact with the world around us and, in particular, how we approach problem-solving in scientific disciplines like physics, computer science, chemistry, and engineering,” said Thomas Searles, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. “And we have a billion-dollar industry in our backyard.”

This year, UIC was selected to join a U.S. Department of Energy-funded effort, the Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage at Brookhaven National Lab (C2QA), which is focused on building the tools necessary to create scalable, distributed, and fault-tolerant quantum computer systems. UIC is one of 24 partner institutions, and the sixth Minority-Serving Institution, to join the quantum center.

“Our partnership with the center opens up incredible opportunities for our faculty, and more importantly our students, to partner on innovative discoveries in quantum computing, network and participate in seminars and career fairs,” Searles said. “C2QA and UIC are bringing opportunities in the field of quantum to underserved groups in Chicago that don’t exist.”

UIC is also involved in the National Science Foundation’s Quantum sensing for Biophysics and Bioengineering and with the Chicago Quantum Exchange, housed at the University of Chicago. UIC researchers also utilize free access to IBM’s quantum systems.

Because these quantum technologies differ drastically from classical technologies, understanding and building them requires a specialized skill set, combining quantum mechanics and electrical engineering. To prepare students, UIC has developed an engineering physics major that combines the two, adding in courses in quantum mechanics and quantum computing.

“We can define the workforce and developments of the future by giving our students the fundamentals that they will need and teach them the current understanding as well as the current important problems and challenges and prepare them for industry,” said Mitra Dutta, distinguished professor.

In classical computing, bits of information are conveyed via a series of billions or even trillions of transistors, which can be in one of two possible states that turn off and on via a series of circuits, or gates. They work in binary: when a transistor is off, it’s a zero. When it’s on, it’s a one.

Quantum computing processes information in an entirely new way. Physics works differently at the subatomic level, so under the laws of quantum mechanics, a quantum bit, or qubit – which includes atoms, photons, and electrons – can simultaneously exist in many states between on and off, in a state called superposition. Quantum computers also take advantage of quantum entanglement, when two or more qubits, including their superpositions, remain linked in a certain way–regardless of how far apart they are. This allows information to spread throughout a quantum computer.

Quantum computers are still in their earliest stages of development, but they hold promise for finding solutions to complex problems that involve many interacting variables. They also hold promise for improving security: most of current encryption protocols are based on the idea that it’s difficult to factor large integers numbers into primes. Quantum computing could potentially crack the most common encryption used.

When it comes to developing a quantum computer, “there are no single solutions,” said Associate Professor Pai-Yen Chen. Faculty within the electrical and computer engineering department have been working on various aspects of quantum computing, including superconducting materials, photonics,
and spintronics.

Searles, whose research is at the intersection of quantum information science and engineering, established a new program in applied and materials physics, which focuses on quantum materials, metamaterials, and quantum information science and engineering.

“The primary goal is to study materials for new computers, making them either safer, faster, or more secure,” Searles says. “This whole idea of quantum computing is what we’re focusing our lab on, moving towards this idea of ‘quantum advantage.’”

Chen has been working to improve microwave circuits used for one type of qubit, the superconducting transmon qubit. His research group aims to implement the on-chip or in-package cavity-like structure that will squeeze microwaves to increase the scalability of qubits, reduce electromagnetic interferences,
and improve both coherence time and dephasing time– that is, the time the qubit remains in the delicate quantum state required for computing. This all contributes to a quantum computer’s speed and functionality.

Both Michael Stroscio, a distinguished professor and the Richard and Loan Hill Professor, and Dutta have been working with quantum mechanics for years, conducting research on nanoelectronics, and nano-opto- electronics. “People talk about quantum like it’s new, but it has been with us for about 100 years,” Stroscio said. “Even in the 1980s, we started seeing new things like entangled states, which is the basis for quantum computing.”

Stroscio and Dutta have been conducting research on quantum dots, nanometer-sized semiconductor particles. When the quantum dots are illuminated by ultraviolet light, an electron in the quantum dot can be excited to a higher state of energy, and the dots can “talk” to each other using the created
entangled light.

UIC faculty and graduate students are not only developing solutions and tools for the next stage of quantum – they are also developing the future quantum workforce. Danilo Erricolo, a professor and director of graduate studies for the electrical and computer engineering department, stresses that electromagnetic knowledge, a deep understanding of mathematical methods, and familiarity with quantum physics are key to working in quantum computing.

Searles says students with experience in engineering physics and quantum computing principles who want jobs or internships have a world of opportunity open to them, even at an undergraduate level. “There was a recent survey of the quantum industry, and 95 percent of companies needed electrical engineers at a bachelor’s or master’s level,” Searles said.

Junxia “Lucy” Shi, an associate professor and principal investigator in the Advanced Semiconductor Materials and Devices Laboratory, investigates and develops novel electron spin qubits in 2D semiconductors. This fall, she will teach an Introduction to Quantum Materials and Devices course, which will explore the basics of electrical and optical properties of electronic materials, qubits, and
quantum sensors.

Trung Ha, a graduate student of Chen’s, recently interned with quantum computing company Maybell Quantum Inc., simulating and fabricating microwave devices for use in quantum computing. These kinds of internships will only increase, faculty say. “The industry wants people without a lot of preconceived old ideas in this new field of technology,” Dutta said. “They can give them the fundamentals and say, these are the problems, we don’t know the way, but you can figure it out.”