WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $37 million in funding for targeted research in materials and chemistry to advance the important emerging field of Quantum Information Science (QIS). 

QIS seeks to exploit intricate quantum mechanical phenomena to create fundamentally new ways of obtaining and processing information.  It is expected to play an increasingly important role in the information technology of the future, with the promise of potentially powerful new capabilities in computing, networking, and sensing.

“America was a pioneer in the establishment of the Information Age,” said Under Secretary for Science Paul Dabbar. “It’s critical that we remain in the forefront of information science and technology, and this new research will help ensure continued U.S. leadership in the information economy in the years ahead.” 

The current initiative includes projects aimed at synthesizing and observing material and chemical systems with exotic quantum properties as well as efforts to use quantum computing to better understand complex material and chemical systems. 

The goal is both to lay the groundwork for the development of new quantum information systems and to use current quantum information capabilities to advance research in material and chemical sciences.

In all some twenty projects—seventeen led by universities and three by DOE national laboratories—were selected by competitive peer review.  Projects are expected to be three years in duration.  Funding for Fiscal Year 2019 totals $14.2 million, with outyear funding contingent on congressional appropriations.  A list of projects can be found here.

###