Following the conclusion of a successful first year seed grant cycle that resulted in providing seed award funds to two research teams led by Penn faculty PIs, the QUIEST Center was energized to further expand its support of quantum research in 2025. The Center requested One-Year Progress Reports from both current research teams to review for consideration of continued funding for a second year, and simultaneously sent out a solicitation for new seed proposals to fund in its second seed grant cycle. This call for proposals was circulated in Fall 2024 with a December submission deadline, and in response the Center received 7 new proposals from PIs across the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the School of Arts and Sciences.
A team of internal and external evaluators with expertise in the fields specific to each proposal carefully reviewed the submitted seed projects and collaboratively chose to fund two new proposals as well as renew funding for both ongoing seed projects.
The two ongoing seed projects from the previous year were renewed for a second year of funding to use over the course of one year as follows:
Steve Zdancewic (CIS) and Gushu Li (CIS/ESE) will continue to pursue their research project: Formal Methods for High-Level Quantum Programming and Compilation.
This project investigates designing formalized quantum software infrastructure to accommodate the ever-evolving quantum hardware with sufficient usability, compilation optimization, and correctness guarantee. Over the past year, the PIs have made substantial progress in advancing formal methods for quantum error correction codes (QECCS) and quantum Hamiltonian simulation, and used seed funds to recruit a new postdoctoral researcher, Kean Chen, for the project. The additional seed funds awarded will be used to continue supporting this postdoc, as well as to further pursue research that extends their current technique in 1) pushing their fault-tolerant verification to include non-ideal decoders and 2) designing a new error correction code for fermionic systems.
Bo Zhen (Physics & Astronomy), Anthony Sigillito (ESE) and James Aguirre (Physics & Astronomy) will continue to pursue their research project: Quantum-dot-based Ultra-high-resolution Arrayed Single-photon spectrometers for Astronomy and material Research (QUASAR).
The PIs of this project are working together to develop a fundamentally new type of quantum spectrometers, operating at the single photon level, for astronomy and material research. The device will be based on gate-controllable Si quantum dots, drawing expertises from quantum engineering, electromagnetic engineering, and astronomical spectroscopy. Over the last year, the team focused on developing both numerical and experimental platforms to advance their research. Experimentally, they have been developing the quantum version of the temporal coupled mode theory to predict light absorption in the coupled QD-antenna system. One of the key results achieved was the measurement of Coulomb diamonds in the Zhen-lab optical cryostat, indicating the formation of a quantum dot. The additional seed funds awarded will be used to continue the support of students and postdocs, to produce and characterize multi-dot devices with the aim of demonstrating photon assisted tunneling, and to simulate the QD-antenna coupled system.
The two new seed projects selected were awarded funding to use over the course of one year as follows:
Martin Claassen (Physics & Astronomy) and Liang Wu (Physics & Astronomy) began pursuing their research project: Quantum Optics of Cavity Quantum Materials.
This project aims to use quantum materials embedded inside optical cavities to create quantum devices capable of efficiently emitting quantum light and altering material properties with photons. By strongly coupling two-dimensional materials to cavity-confined electromagnetic modes and counting emitted photons, the PIs expect to harness the collective quantum-mechanical behavior near a phase transition to generate large single-photon nonlinearities, enabling applications in quantum computing, communication, and sensing technologies.
Eric Schelter (Chemistry) and Sergei Vinogradov (Chemistry) began pursuing their research project: Development of Chiral Ce(III) Molecular Quantum Color Centers.
For this project, the team is developing new chiral, light-emitting lanthanide metal complexes as candidates for qubits and, ultimately, quantum sensors. New molecular compounds are being synthesized and their properties, including light emission characteristics, electron spin resonance, and spin dynamics are being studied towards structure-property relationships for QIS applications.
The QUIEST Center is deeply grateful for the strong engagement and the efforts put forth by the PIs on all seed submissions and ongoing research projects.