The University of Chicago has been very active in establishing collaborations with various entities and has just added one more. Besides being a founding member of the Chicago Quantum Exchange, the lead for one of NSF’s Quantum Leap Challenge Institute called QuBBE (Quantum Sensing for Biophysics and Bioengineering), a partner or affiliate of the Department of Energy’s Q-NEXT and HQAN, and an affiliate of NSF’s SQMS, the university also announced recently other collaborations in ten year multi-million quantum research programs with IBM and Google.
This latest collaboration is the Chicago-Tohoku Quantum Alliance with Tohoku University in Japan. The collaboration may bring to the University of Chicago some capabilities that weren’t available in some of the others mentioned above. Tohoku University has been a leader in materials science and microelectronics and possesses a large 300 mm wafer processing facility. In addition, this collaboration may help the University of Chicago strengthen connections with other Japanese industrial companies, academic institutions, and governments. For its part, Tohoku will benefit from Chicago’s fundamental quantum science research as well as its experience operating a 127 mile quantum communications network in the Chicago metropolitan area. In addition, Chicago is also the location of the Duality quantum accelerator which works to incubate quantum startups. Tohoku is planning to launch an accelerator of their own in Japan. The collaboration will allow Tohoku to tap into the experience the University of Chicago has had with Duality. The two universities are planning on holding workshops as well as working together on various workforce development programs which will include both student and faculty exchange programs.
The University of Chicago has issued a press release to announce the collaboration and it is available here.
June 6, 2023