NSF Renews Illinois-Led HQAN With $37.5M for Modular Quantum Computing

Insider Brief

• The U.S. National Science Foundation has renewed the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign-led NSF HQAN with $37.5 million over five years to advance modular quantum computing and workforce development.
• NSF HQAN brings together 45 senior researchers from six institutions to develop interconnected quantum processing architectures, including interconnects, transducers, hardware testbeds, software and algorithms.
• The second phase will focus on closing technical gaps in modular quantum computing while expanding education and workforce programs, with 16 industry partners including Google, IBM, IonQ and Quantinuum.

Press release – The U.S. National Science Foundation has renewed the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign-led NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Hybrid Quantum Architectures and Networks (NSF HQAN) for a second phase with $37.5 million in funding over five years. One of the original three NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes, NSF HQAN is the nexus of quantum information science and technology research in the Midwest.

NSF HQAN studies modular approaches to quantum computing, in which smaller quantum processing units (QPUs) are networked to achieve greater combined computing power. This approach avoids the technical difficulties of directly scaling QPUs, and most experts agree that this is the approach most likely to yield quantum computers with the largest advantage. In its first phase, center researchers have made many technical achievements that have laid the foundation for modular approaches. The second phase will build on these achievements to deliver an industry-ready pathway for implementing modular principles.