Laser FOQUSed on the future: Supporting next-gen quantum scientists

Over two days in June, 29 graduate students, faculty members, and administrators from minority serving institutions (MSIs) across the country gathered at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory for the Faculty Outreach for Quantum-Invested UniversitieS (FOQUS) program.

Co-hosted by the Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage (C²QA) and Brookhaven Lab’s Office of Educational Programs, the program offered participants tours of several facilities supporting quantum innovation at Brookhaven Lab and opportunities to network with the researchers — and each other — to explore potential collaborations.

C²QA, a DOE National Quantum Information Science (QIS) Research Center led by Brookhaven Lab, was established so researchers could pursue the development of quantum computers by “co-designing” quantum materials, devices, and software. These three facets of quantum computing are inherently intertwined, but the connections between the people exploring these quantum questions are just as important for achieving the center’s goals.

“We developed FOQUS to build relationships with the program participants and researchers from Brookhaven and the five National QIS Research Centers,” said Kimberly McGuire, C²QA chief operations officer. “There are many opportunities within the national lab complex, and now our 2024 FOQUS cohort has been made aware of them and embraced by the QIS community as collaborators. FOQUS was a bigger success than we could have imagined.”

That success, in part, was due to the efforts of the Office of Educational Programs, whose members played an integral role in designing the event and recruiting 13 of the participants through the Quantum Faculty Outreach program, which is sponsored by the Office of Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists (WDTS) at DOE’s Office of Science.

A glimpse into quantum at Brookhaven

Giving the participants an opportunity to see how cutting-edge quantum research facilities operate, the FOQUS program included tours of two key facilities for materials characterization — the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) and the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), both of which are DOE Office of Science user facilities at Brookhaven Lab. NSLS-II enables advanced materials characterization with X-ray beams that are 10 billion times brighter than the sun. This characterization research is key for assessing different materials that make up qubits, the building blocks of quantum computers. Similarly, researchers leverage the advanced electron microscope capabilities of CFN to evaluate quantum materials and better inform the design of quantum devices. Included on the tour of CFN was the Quantum Material Press, an automated tool for synthesizing quantum materials with layers as thin as a single atom.

“We want you to come back to Brookhaven and use the instruments at NSLS-II and CFN,” James Misewich, associate laboratory director for Energy and Photon Sciences at Brookhaven, explained to the FOQUS participants. “That’s what we’re here for as a national facility.”

The participants learned that while some Brookhaven scientists are studying different materials to build the best qubits, others are working on the software that will enable complex calculations and simulations on quantum computers.

“Not only are our scientists developing algorithms for these quantum computers, but they are also figuring out what kinds of problems quantum computers can solve more effectively than classical computers,” Misewich added. This sought-after goal of building quantum computers that outperform classical computers is known as achieving “quantum advantage,” which is where C²QA gets the second half of its name.

And as part of their time at Brookhaven, FOQUS participants engaged in conversation with researchers from Brookhaven’s Computational Science Initiative (CSI) who are already developing quantum code that can run on classical supercomputers as the development of practical quantum computers progresses.

FOQUS participants also met with researchers from Brookhaven’s Instrumentation Department, who are collaborating with Stony Brook University (SBU) to expand the quantum networking and communications infrastructure spanning over 100 miles across Long Island and the New York City metropolitan area. And they were able to visit Brookhaven’s Quantum Network Facility, where quantum scientists generate pairs of entangled photons and transmit them to other network nodes, like SBU.

More than learning about quantum

Though the participants gathered to learn about quantum information science and quantum computing, they came from a variety of disciplines. Tandeka Boko, for example, is an anatomy and physiology professor at Forsyth Technical Community College in North Carolina. Boko loves to learn, and this partially motivated her to participate in the WDTS Quantum Outreach program and attend FOQUS, as she was eager to “explore tools enabling this research and connect face-to-face with the people involved in this work.”

But Boko is also interested in making quantum more accessible to her students by incorporating it into her classroom lessons. And to do so, she needed to see the action for herself.

“I want to pique my students’ interest enough for them to choose to engage in this growing field,” said Boko. “From secure communications to drug discovery and medical device development, there are countless ways that quantum science can support humanity, and we have yet to uncover so many of them.”

Like Boko, many of the FOQUS participants attended the program because they recognize the importance of fostering community that can enhance their mentees’ growth academically and professionally. But this collaboration is also key for realizing scientific missions, including C²QA’s goal of creating scalable, distributed, and fault-tolerant quantum computer systems.

“Single institutions are not appropriate for addressing these big challenges,” said Raymond Samuel, a professor at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University’s College of Science and Technology and a C²QA affiliate member who has attended both iterations of FOQUS as part of the WDTS Quantum Faculty Outreach program. “We need to approach this research with team science and interinstitutional collaboration. FOQUS is about making those connections and building out those collaborations.”

In the spirit of collaboration, the participants also had the opportunity to meet representatives from the other four DOE National QIS Research Centers — Q-NEXT, Quantum Science Center, Quantum Systems Accelerator, and Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center — and discuss other quantum research opportunities across the country.

All these collaborative opportunities would not be possible without the collaboration that brought FOQUS to life for a second year. Specifically, Brookhaven’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and the IBM-HBCU Quantum Center were instrumental partners in the planning and execution of this program.

Though 29 individuals spent two days at Brookhaven Lab, FOQUS 2024 will touch many more lives as participants bring their experiences back to their home institutions.

“My goal was to form community and build connections, so I can place my students somewhere they can continue to grow,” said Aloysius Jones, a Pathway Equity Navigator at Forsyth Technical Community College who also participated in FOQUS 2024 as part of the WDTS Quantum Faculty Outreach program. “I didn’t have access to many opportunities when I was a student. I want my students to have the experiences I never got to have.”

McGuire said, “FOQUS is diversifying the QIS ecosystem by inviting newcomers who can contribute their talent and ideas to these scientific conversations. For the QIS community to successfully build up the workforce, we must embrace two new concepts: ‘entangling the people’ and ‘superposition mindset.’”

Entangling the people ensures that individuals with the skills, knowledge, and desire to participate in the QIS workforce remain connected, regardless of distance or differences.

What does adoption of the superposition mindset look like? McGuire said it involves “ridding our minds of the noise” that sometimes denies people opportunities — and believing that anyone has the potential to be a successful contributor.

“These two concepts, as they relate to people, will be game changing for the QIS ecosystem,” McGuire summarized, “and FOQUS proudly embodies them both.”

Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit science.energy.gov.

Follow @BrookhavenLab on social media. Find us on Instagram, LinkedIn, X, and Facebook.