The Boeing Co. has deepened its partnership with the Chicago Quantum Exchange through a new collaboration that will support early-career scientists and seed new research, helping to grow the region’s already robust quantum ecosystem and boosting efforts to develop next-generation quantum sensors and networks.
Boeing, a leading global aerospace company and a driver of quantum information science and engineering research, has been a CQE partner since 2019. Their latest commitment of more than $3.5 million will support technical workshops and the new research projects that stem from them, as well as graduate student and postdoctoral fellows and an award that recognizes early-career researchers whose work moves the field in new directions. It also renews Boeing’s corporate partnership with the CQE.
The new initiatives will build on existing regional strengths to create new and expanded research and workforce development programs that engage a diverse regional and global audience. The mission of advancing QISE technology by fostering collaboration is one shared by Boeing, the CQE, and its member institutions, which include the University of Chicago, the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Northwestern University. The CQE’s members anchor a rapidly growing Midwest quantum ecosystem that is home to a 124-mile quantum network testbed across Chicagoland, four of the 10 quantum research centers funded by the 2018 National Quantum Initiative Act and the first quantum startup accelerator in the nation.
“Our combined partnerships among university researchers, national labs, startups, and leading businesses like Boeing make the Chicago region uniquely positioned to lead the next generation of quantum science and engineering,” said Juan de Pablo, the Liew Family Professor of Molecular Engineering, and Executive Vice President for Science, Innovation, National Laboratories and Global Initiatives at the University of Chicago. “Boeing’s support and collaboration are vital to our collective success.”