People News

JQI Fellow Vladimir Manucharyan has received a 2019 Google Faculty Research Award. It is the second consecutive year that Manucharyan, who is also an Associate Professor of Physics at UMD, has earned the honor.

This year’s award will continue to support research by Manucharyan and his team into quantum computing hardware based on superconducting circuits. They are pursuing the development of special quantum bits—called fluxonium qubits—for use in a new generation of computers.

JQI Fellow Mohammad Hafezi and JQI Graduate Researchers Alireza Seif and Hwanmun Kim have received an award from Google to support research identifying and developing problems that simple quantum computers might help solve. The work could bridge the divide between demonstrating quantum supremacy, as Google claimed to do in October, and building practical quantum computers that can run established algorithms.

Three JQI Fellows are included on the Web of Science Group’s 2019 list of Highly Cited Researchers, a compilation of influential names in science.

The University of Maryland will hold a one-day symposium focusing on local research into quantum materials—condensed matter systems that exhibit strong quantum effects and hold promise as potential components in next-generation computers, sensors and other devices. The symposium will be held Sept. 26, 2019, on campus in the Kim Engineering Building.