2025

The field of quantum information science (QIS) relies heavily on physics—and many think about it in those terms—but materials science and chemistry are also critical to the success of quantum technologies like computing, sensing and communications, according to Mark Hersam, PhD, chair of the materials science and engineering department and director of the materials research center at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering.

Just when scientists thought they knew everything about crystals, a Northwestern University and University of Wisconsin-Madison collaboration has uncovered a hidden secret.

Northwestern University chemist James Gaynor has been named a 2025 Beckman Young Instigator by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation. Established in 1991, the Beckman Young Investigator Program supports the most promising young faculty members in the early stages of their academic careers in the chemical and life sciences. It is particularly designed to foster the invention of methods, instruments and materials to open new avenues of scientific research. Each awardee receives $600,000 in funding across four years.

The US Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems (SQMS) Center is betting on ultrahigh-quality-factor superconducting cavity technologies in its quest to develop scalable “qudit-based” quantum computing and communication architectures.

While entangled photons hold incredible promise for quantum computing and communications, they have a major inherent disadvantage. After one use, they simply disappear. But in a new study published in Physical Review Letters, Northwestern physicists propose a strategy to maintain communications in a constantly changing, unpredictable quantum network. By rebuilding these disappearing connections, the researchers found the network eventually settles into a stable — albeit different — state.