Harvard-AWS alliance to advance research in quantum science
Harvard University and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have launched a strategic alliance to advance fundamental research and innovation in quantum networking.
The initiative focuses on driving rapid progress toward specific research aims in quantum networking at the Harvard Quantum Initiative (HQI).
“By working together, academia and industry can accelerate discovery and technological progress,” said Harvard Provost Alan M. Garber. “Through this alliance with AWS, we will bring scientific scholarship and education to bear on some of the most exciting frontiers in quantum science. Together we will advance the goals of the Harvard Quantum Initiative, an interfaculty initiative that exemplifies the rewards of collaboration across different scientific domains.”
“Quantum networking is an emerging space with promise to help tackle challenges of growing importance to our world, such as secure communication and powerful quantum computing clusters,” said Antia Lamas-Linares, quantum networking lead at AWS. “The collaborative initiative between AWS and Harvard will harness top research talent to explore quantum networking today and establish a framework to develop the quantum workforce of the future.”
Expanding the Potential for Quantum Impact
Through a three-year research alliance enabled by Harvard’s Office of Technology Development, AWS will support faculty-led and designed research projects at HQI in the areas of quantum memories, integrated photonics, and quantum materials. A portion of that funding will also allow an upgrade to the quantum fabrication capabilities of the NSF-supported Center for Nanoscale Systems at Harvard, a critically important facility for nanofabrication, materials characterization, soft lithography, and imaging, with locations in Cambridge and at the Science and Engineering Complex in Allston.
The overall goal of the research projects is to develop foundational methods and technologies for what eventually will become a quantum internet, where communication and information processing is performed according to the laws of quantum mechanics. As the world faces relentless threats to privacy and security, exploring possible quantum networking applications is an important area of focus. The behavior of information in a quantum network is expected to enable unprecedented security and anonymity. Yet, for those aspirations to be realized, physicists, engineers, and materials scientists must overcome challenges to store, manipulate, repeat, and transmit quantum information over long distances.
“Exploring this potential requires a deep understanding of the industry’s toughest scientific challenges that will lead to development of new hardware, software, and applications for quantum networks,” said Lamas-Linares.
“These projects build upon fundamental work that has been done at Harvard labs for well over a decade by several generations of students and postdocs who have pushed the frontier, starting from theory, to experimental physics, to device engineering, to materials development,” said Mikhail Lukin, the George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Physics and codirector of HQI.
In parallel with research efforts at Harvard, researchers at AWS will strive to advance the engineering maturity and scalability of quantum memory technology. Today’s news builds on Amazon’s June 2022 announcement around the AWS Center for Quantum Networking where AWS will focus on addressing scientific and engineering challenges with the goal to develop new hardware, software, and applications for quantum networks that connect and amplify the capabilities of individual quantum processors. The alliance will be led by Antia Lamas-Linares, who leads a team of AWS Quantum Research Scientists at the AWS Center for Quantum Networking.
“Innovation in advanced technology areas like quantum will require collaboration by academic labs, small industry, leading corporations, and likely also government labs,” Lukin added. “It is part of the HQI mission to enable these kinds of collaborations, and this alliance with AWS is a critical step in that direction.”
“In quantum, we have a unique opportunity because the research is still so much in the early stages of basic discovery, yet also at the threshold of commercial implementation,” said HQI codirector Evelyn Hu, the Tarr-Coyne Professor of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering. “This is very unusual in science and technology. For students training in this field, especially, it’s important to get an appreciation of what science and engineering can do, but also what it needs to do to be scaled up, go to the outside world, and be relevant.”
