Chicago is continuing to establish itself as an emerging city for quantum technology, with its latest effort coming in the form of a $25 million quantum institute for biology research.
The National Science Foundation announced Thursday that it's launching a $25 million institute in Chicago to investigate quantum sensing for biology. The institute will be headquartered at the University of Chicago and funded for the next five years.
It's part of a nationwide initiative by the NSF to boost research in quantum science and will include additional partnerships with universities such as Chicago State University, the University of Illinois at Chicago and Harvard University. The goal is to find new ways to use quantum technology in the field of biology, as well as train the quantum workforce of tomorrow right here in Chicago.
“It’s rapidly becoming clear that quantum sensing could be transformative in the next phases of biology research, and Chicago is perfectly positioned as a home for that future, with a nexus of academic institutions, national laboratories, industries and a growing quantum workforce," Greg Engel, professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago and the new institute’s director, said in a statement.
The new institute comes on the heels of several major quantum initiatives in Chicago already underway. Last year the U.S. Department of Energy established five new quantum research centers, two of which are in the Chicago area: Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, both of which will receive $115 million in funding over the next five years. The University of Illinois also announced a quantum computing institute that will explore ways to create and connect quantum computers and networks.
Chicago is also home to Duality, the first startup accelerator program in the country that's dedicated solely to quantum computing. And among the companies in its inaugural cohort is Super.tech, a Chicago company that's developing software that makes quantum computing faster and more efficient.
