CU Boulder today announced seven winners of the 2023-2024 translational quantum research seed grants incentivizing quantum science and technology innovations launched from the lab to accelerate them along the development path to new programs and businesses.

In April 2023, the Colorado Economic Development Commission approved nearly $1.5 million to help connect discoveries from basic and applied research to Colorado’s startup ecosystem and provide effective pathways for Colorado students to enter the quantum workforce. These translational quantum research seed grants, which are being administered by CU Boulder, are one of the first results of that funding.

“Colorado’s wealth of academic and national laboratory researchers, along with a thriving ecosystem of established and startup quantum science and technology companies, provides one-of-a-kind opportunities for students, researchers and our workforce,” said Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation and Dean of the Institutes Massimo Ruzzene. “The goal of these seed grants is to help researchers accelerate their discoveries towards commercialization. The success of quantum translation, of which these grants are a part, also has important implications for our national economy and national security.”

The awarded projects—rooted in research advances with demonstrable commercial potential—include three led by university researchers, all from CU Boulder, and four led by commercial enterprises that are pioneering the translation of quantum discoveries into products and services driving economic and everyday impact for Colorado and society. Each award provides $50,000 to advance each project and will be deployed over a period of 18 months. Additional seed grants will be made available through a similar process in each of the next two years.

“Colorado leads the world in quantum innovation, quantum companies and quantum jobs,” said Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT) Executive Director Eve Lieberman. “The seed grants announced today are an important step to connect quantum discoveries in the lab to the commercial sector, continuing our state’s leadership in this important new technology and supporting the creation of new businesses and new jobs.”

The seed grants—which were made available to any Colorado research institution or industry partner—are part of an increasing investment to expand on Colorado’s longstanding reputation as a hub of quantum science and technology discovery. The region’s legacy in the global quantum community is largely a result of decades of leadership and breakthroughs emanating from the triad of CU Boulder, NIST and JILA, including four Nobel Prizes in physics awarded to affiliated quantum researchers.

In the context of an accelerating global competition to realize the vast potential promised by quantum science and technology, the push for quantum advances has been the focus of considerable public- and private-sector investment across industries in recent years. In Colorado, quantum-related activity is extending beyond the traditional Boulder triad to include a growing web of interconnected ventures that are inventing and innovating to translate research advances into commercially viable products that advance frontiers of quantum to benefit society broadly.

The CUbit Quantum Initiative at CU Boulder—a leading player in both administering the grant program and facilitating the success of the university’s quantum research productivity—is an interdisciplinary hub for quantum research intended to advance the quantum ecosystem broadly. Crafted to focus the nexus of CU Boulder, the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s physics division (as a core component of JILA) and quantum-focused companies, CUbit aims to advance fundamental science and build a strong foundation for novel quantum technologies and their rapid dissemination, application and commercialization.

“Colorado already has the highest number of quantum-related companies in the nation,” said Scott Sternberg, executive director of CUbit. “These grants, and those in upcoming years, will help keep the translation pipeline healthy and thereby grow our economy.”

• Quantum Science & Technology

Translational Quantum Research Seed Grant Awards

*All awards are $50,000 and for a duration of 18 months

• Longji Cui: “Quantum electronics driven photocatalysis for efficient clean fuel generation and decarbonization”
  CU Boulder; Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering
• Charlie Danaher: “Adaptive cooling technology”
  Danaher Cryogenics, Ltd.
• Rozhin Eskandarpour: “Translating quantum contingency analysis from lab to the field”
  Resilient Entanglement Inc.
• Murray Holland: “Developing a strontium optical lattice atom interferometer”
  CU Boulder; Department of Physics
• Poolad Imany: “Scalable optical cavity nonfabrication for efficient entanglement generation with artificial atoms”
  Icarus Quantum, Inc.
• Philip Makotyn: “Enabling technology for quantum applications: narrow linewidth innovative lasers”
  Vexlum US
• Greg Rieker: “Carcinogenic air pollutant monitoring with dual-comb spectroscopy”
  CU Boulder; Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering

Off

Assistant Professor Longji Cui has received a prestigious  for research he hopes will improve the next generation of nanoelectronics and renewable energy technology.

As nanotechnology continues to miniaturize to near atomic scale, while simultaneously becoming more powerful, the need to understand heat transfer at the fundamental single molecule level becomes crucial. And yet the behavior of heat at the microscopic scale, and the ways in which it can be leveraged to make devices more efficient and less wasteful, is little understood.

With the help of this funding, Cui is looking to fill that knowledge gap. NSF CAREER Awards provide over $500,000 over a period of five years for early career faculty who are dedicated to research and education.

“One of the major challenges for the next generation of nanoelectronic devices is heat transport and dissipation,” Cui said. “When you’re at that smallest physical scale possible, heat is dissipating over a much smaller area, which makes the density of it even higher.”

Cui has remained focused on this problem throughout his academic career. In 2019, he published a groundbreaking paper in  called “,” which carried out the first study that measured thermal conductance through a single molecule.

Not only was Cui the first to make these measurements, but the tools and techniques with which he made them were of his own creation, too.

Cui developed a heat-detecting microscope that operates with sub-nanometer spatial resolution and picowatt (one trillionth of a watt) energy resolution. Called ultra-high resolution scanning thermal probe microscopy, or SThM, the microscope allowed Cui to carry out the measurements.

With the funding from the NSF CAREER Award, Cui will continue to push his research to the bleeding edge. In his experiments, Cui has begun to pioneer a new field called molecular phononics, which studies how certain quantum phononic effects could influence thermal transfer.

“Phonons are major carriers for thermal transport at the quantum level,” said Cui, “like electrons for electrical transport.”

Cui thinks a better understanding of different quantum electronic and phononic thermal effects could be crucial to improving heat dissipation and thermoelectric energy conversion at the microscopic level. 

This bottom-up approach to energy conversion could not only have outsized effects on the next generation of nanotechnology but on the field of renewable energy, too. Cui’s research will investigate how the conversion of heat to electricity at the molecular level could lead to a more efficient waste heat harvesting technology in the future.

“puts you in direct contact with some of the leading new fields in thermodynamics and quantum mechanics,” PhD student said. “He’s very ambitious.”

Cui wants the next generation of nanoengineers and thermal scientists to be at the vanguard of this research. He also wants to make sure that women and other groups underrepresented in engineering are a major part of this new generation.

“The cutting-edge fields of nano and quantum thermal engineering are something a mechanical engineer are perfectly suited for,” Cui said. “But first we need to update the curriculum.”

Cui is already teaching a class on quantum engineering for graduate students, but he wants to offer the class at the undergraduate level as well. Cui also plans on developing project-based, hands-on teaching modules for K-12 students that incorporate his expertise in ultra-high resolution scanning thermal probe microscopy.

 “Students know about the worlds of nano and quantum technology,” said Cui, “but we need to get it at their fingertips.”

Cui is a faculty member in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Materials Science and Engineering Program. Six faculty members from the College of Engineering and Applied Science received CAREER Awards in 2023.

Off