On January 13, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to $625 million over the next five years to establish two to five multidisciplinary Quantum Information Science (QIS) Research Centers in support of the National Quantum Initiative.
The National
Quantum Initiative Act, signed into law by President Trump in December 2018,
established a coordinated multiagency program to support research and training
in QIS, encompassing activities at the National Institute of Standards and
Technology, the Department of Energy, and the National Science
Foundation.
The Act called for
the creation of a total between four and ten competitively awarded QIS research
centers.
“QIS is on the
threshold of providing transformative technology that will impact discovery
science and technological innovation in the coming decades,” said U.S.
Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette. “At the direction of President Trump, the
Department will answer the call of the National Quantum Initiative Act through
our QIS Centers and ensure that America remains a world leader in this rapidly
advancing field.”
“Critical to
America’s leadership in this field, the new quantum research centers provide
training and collaboration opportunities for the next generation of QIS
scientists and engineers,” said Ivanka Trump, Advisor to the President.
“We thank Secretary Brouillette and the Department of Energy for its work to
maintain and strengthen our nation’s competitiveness in this industry of the
future.”
“America
continues to lead the world in QIS and emerging technologies because of our
incredible innovation ecosystem. The National Quantum Initiative launched by
the President, including these new research centers, leverages the combined
strengths of academia, industry, and DOE laboratories to drive QIS breakthroughs,”
said Chief Technology Officer of the United States Michael Kratsios.
To further advance
that effort, DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory announced that it had launched a
new, 52-mile testbed for quantum communications experiments, which will enable
scientists to address challenges in operating a quantum network and help lay
the foundation for a quantum internet.
The Department’s
planned investment in QIS Centers represents a long-term, large-scale
commitment of U.S. scientific and technological resources to a highly
competitive and promising new area of investigation with enormous potential to
transform science and technology.
The aim of the
Centers, coupled with DOE’s core research portfolio, is to create the ecosystem
needed to foster and facilitate advancement of QIS, with major anticipated
benefits for national security, economic competitiveness, and America’s
continued leadership in science.
Each QIS Center is
expected to incorporate a collaborative research team spanning multiple
scientific and engineering disciplines and multiple institutions. Centers
will draw on the resources of the full range of research communities stewarded
by DOE’s Office of Science and integrate elements from a wide range of
technical fields.
The full Funding Opportunity Announcement is available here.
Source: DOE
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