Rising leaders of Quantum Prairie

As a high school student in Queens, New York, Jennifer Choy’s interest in science was spurred in biology class. But as a first-generation college student at MIT, Choy found herself drawn to quantum information science. She loved both the non-intuitive aspects of quantum mechanics and the multidisciplinary nature of the field. After getting her PhD at Harvard University, she worked for five years in industry before getting hired as a faculty member at University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2019. 

It was in the Midwest that she found a quantum community. 

“UW–Madison has a strong history in quantum and has a continually growing quantum science research community and is home to the first MS in Quantum Computing program in the nation,” she said. 

Now, as she develops high-performing, ultra-precise quantum sensors based on neutral atoms and solid-state quantum emitters, she has joined several multidisciplinary collaborations based in the Midwest, including HQAN and Q-NEXT. 

“Thanks to the cluster of universities and national labs with strong and diverse quantum research programs in Wisconsin and Illinois, I was able to become part of large research centers based in the Midwest that were started by the National Quantum Initiative,” she said. “It ended up being very lucky that I got to be here. It’s a very supportive and collaborative ecosystem.” 

Since 2023, Choy is helping to lead HQAN’s education, outreach, and workforce development initiatives, including UW–Madison’s Wonders of Quantum Physics outreach program, which offers science camps and hands-on quantum exhibits to engage audiences with quantum science. Other initiatives include TeachQuantum, an annual six-week summer research experience for high school teachers in Wisconsin and Chicago that immerses them in real-world quantum research environments and prepares them to teach quantum-focused STEM concepts in their classrooms. 

“Quantum science is a field that is normally taught at an advanced level in college,” she said. “There are foundational principles that can be introduced much earlier and doing so can get students interested in the field early on and equip a broader audience with basic concepts that allows them to better understand and discern quantum-related news and media.” 

Getting students excited about the possibilities in quantum research and industry is increasingly important, as experts forecast a workforce shortage in the field. A burgeoning field filled with new opportunities also sets the stage for recruiting a diverse group of students into the field. 

“We want to find talented students that can help continue to develop this field,” she said. “Given the wealth of research infrastructure and opportunities here, the Midwest is a great place to start and continue the journey.” 

No need for Silicon Valley 

When Pranav Gokhale was growing up in the suburbs of Washington D.C., scientists from the nearby National Institute of Standards and Technology visited his school to give demonstrations of physics concepts, such as using sunglasses to demonstrate the polarization of light. Gokhale was so impressed that in middle school, he called up scientists at NIST over and over, asking them for an internship. He finally called enough times that they gave in. 

At NIST, he undertook research on quantum cryptography and ion traps. The excitement around quantum technology led him to major in computer science and physics and conduct quantum research as an undergraduate. But after graduation, he headed to the Silicon Valley, eager to become part of the startup scene. 

Soon, though, he felt the draw back to quantum, and enrolled in a PhD program at the University of Chicago to work with quantum software leader Fred Chong, the Seymour Goodman Professor of Computer Architecture in the Department of Computer Science. 

“I came into grad school with the mindset that I wanted to commercialize a deep tech innovation at the intersection of AI and quantum,” he said. He joined UChicago Polsky Center’s George Shultz Innovation Fund program, where he conducted due diligence on university startups. At the same time, he and Chong developed a new machine learning-based approach to software for quantum computing systems, and Gokhale began to consider how to commercialize it. 

“I already had this picture in my mind that I would do graduate work at UChicago and then go back to launch a company in Silicon Valley,” he said. “But by 2019, my view on that had completely flipped. It became clear that Chicago was the right place for our company. There was so much talent here and so much interest from local industries in finance, energy and logistics. The strong role of national labs like Argonne was icing on the cake.” 

The duo incorporated Super.tech in 2020 and were accepted into Argonne’s Chain Reaction Innovations two-year fellowship program. Then, in 2021, they were accepted into the 12-month, Chicago-based Duality accelerator, which is led by UChicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the CQE, along with founding partners the UIUC, Argonne, and P33, a nonprofit organization that works to transform Chicago into a tier-one technology and innovation hub.  

Duality, which hosted 11 startups in its first two cohorts and welcomed four into its third cohort this summer, offered Super.tech and the other startups entrepreneurial training, business expertise, industry mentorship, funding, and access to world-class facilities. That summer, Super.tech emerged from stealth and began to sell their software stack to companies and research labs who wanted a software system that could be deeply integrated into the quantum computing hardware. 

They quickly found that Chicago “was one of the few cities where most quantum is actively discussed by C-level executives at the board level,” Gokhale said. “The amount of attention given to quantum in Chicago is exceptional.” 

Super.tech began collaborating with quantum technology company Infleqtion (formerly known as ColdQuanta), which acquired Super.tech in 2022. Infleqtion now has two offices in the Midwest region—one in Madison and one in Chicago—so it can access the region’s deep talent pool and world-class researchers. Infleqtion raised a $110M Series B financing round last year and is investing significant resources into its Midwest operations. 

Finding path to quantum  

Growing up in South Texas, Adrian Portales was drawn toward science, especially the experimental nature of research. In college at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, he majored in mechanical engineering and sought various research experiences around the country. He soon found himself working in nanotechnology, renewable energy, microbiology, fluid dynamics, and power electronics at national labs and universities, an eclectic assortment of topics that fed his voracious appetite for learning about the potential applications of science and engineering. 

With the emerging field of quantum science on the rise, Portales was quickly captivated by its potential to change the world. 

“It’s definitely an exciting time to be in quantum,” he said. “At some level, it incorporates all the different areas I’ve worked in, but in an entirely new and interesting way.” 

In 2022, Portales was a part of the inaugural cohort for the Open Quantum Initiative Undergraduate Fellowship, which provides students with summer research experiences working in quantum science laboratories and research groups at CQE affiliates.   

Soon, he was in the Chicago area working to build scalable hardware for quantum networks at Argonne National Laboratory with Supratik Guha, senior scientist/senior advisor to physical sciences & engineering at Argonne and a professor in UChicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. 

“Being surrounded by some of the smartest people and greatest user facilities in the world was truly a transformative and unforgettable experience,” he said. 

That summer, he met the 11 other OQI Fellows who had come to the Midwest to engage in quantum research. Over the next year, he kept in touch with several cohort members, forming relationships he believes will last well into his career. Portales also experienced how imperative the partnerships between academia, industry, and national laboratories are to advancing the field, especially in quantum networking, the area he is currently pursuing. 

“So much of the progress in quantum networking is happening right here in the Chicago area, and if I wanted to be a part of it—and I did—I knew I needed to be here,” he said. 

In the fall, Portales will head to Harvard University to continue conducting research in quantum science and plans to eventually get his Ph.D. in the field. 

Best place to recruit talent 

When Farina, the entrepreneur who moved EeroQ to Chicago, met physicist Johannes Pollanen in 2011, they became fast friends. At the time, Farina was the co-founder and CEO of software startup JetZet, and Pollanen was a graduate student in physics at Northwestern University. 

They hadn’t planned to collaborate, but years later, after Farina co-founded and sold another software startup, he visited Pollanen at his new post as a professor at Michigan State University. 

Pollanen became interested in quantum computing during his postdoc at Caltech and thought electrons on helium—first proposed by Phil Platzman of Bell Labs and Mark Dykman of MSU in 1999, and expanded upon in 2003 by Princeton Professor Steve Lyon, now EeroQ’s chief technology officer—could be a winning dark horse candidate for quantum computing. Farina, who was also an angel investor on the side, saw the opportunity. 

“I recognized that the method Johannes was using to build a quantum processor had enormous potential to achieve scalability, a major hurdle on the road to commercial viability, and that no other company out there was doing it,” Farina said. “I also saw how the power of quantum computing could change the world in a way that was a rare opportunity.”  

Together they launched EeroQ, and Farina recruited investors to sponsor the research. For the next five years, Pollanen continued to optimize the technology. In 2022, it was time to get venture capital funding and open a brick-and-mortar headquarters. The team conducted a search, analyzing potential locations around the globe. 

They landed on Chicago. 

After raising $7.25 million last year in a funding round led by B Capital, the strategic venture partner of the Boston Consulting Group, Farina began working to expand his staff. He assumed it would take six months to hire the eight employees they needed. 

They filled the positions within a month. 

In July, the company announced details for Wonder Lake, a scalable quantum architecture system that uses electrons on liquid helium to eventually support 2,432 qubits on one chip, produced at a standard chip foundry—a step toward building a quantum computer.   

“We want to build the best quantum computer, and to do so ethically,” said Farina, who has been a leading voice for the adoption of ethical guidelines as quantum technologies develop. “And Chicago is the place to do that.” 

Open-minded ecosystem  

Koleva, the Quantopticon co-founder, never expected to have a career in quantum information science. She majored in physics at Imperial College London and loved her quantum mechanics courses—one of the few physics courses taught by a woman—but in graduate school, she pursued super-resolution imaging of protein signaling complexes. 

“I picked up so many skills, acquired so much knowledge from different scientific fields, and learned to communicate effectively with scientists from different backgrounds,” she said. “But then I thought the imaging technique had run its course.” 

Her mother, physicist Gaby Slavcheva, had been working on a model to describe the interactions between light and matter at the nanoscale, taking into account quantum effects. But she was having trouble generalizing the model to different energy levels. Koleva, who loves to code, took on the challenge, working nights and weekends to make it work. 

The model was so successful that they launched a company, Quantopticon, to commercialize it as a software package called Quantillion. Quantillion simulates quantum-photonic devices, specializing in modeling solid-state quantum systems. With it, companies and researchers can design their own quantum devices, saving hardware engineers time and money in the optimization step of the design cycle. 

A grant from Innovate UK got them off the ground, but it was in Duality that Koleva found the supportive ecosystem she needed to take the company to the next level. Quantopticon was among six startups, including Super.tech, that made up the pioneering accelerator’s first cohort in 2021; it was a group Koleva called “exceptional.” 

“Even now we draw on each other’s experiences and act as resources for each other,” she said. 

With an office in Chicago and plans to move its headquarters there, Quantopticon has now hired local employees with quantum optics and computational skills and hopes to grow its employee base as it strives to ultimately develop process design kits for quantum photonics foundries. 

“The Chicago ecosystem is very open-minded and inquisitive,” she said. “In Europe, there’s much more skepticism and fear of start-ups, and less willingness to collaborate. We want to stay in Chicago." 

–Adapted from a story on the Chicago Quantum Exchange website.