The U.S. National Science Foundation is investing more than $290 million to advance the development of quantum computing.gettyThe National Science Foundation is investing more than $290 million to fund eight university-based research institutes as part of its Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes program, created by the agency in 2020 to fulfill the 2018 "National Quantum Initiative Act."Three of the eight institutes are new. The other five were established with previous NSF funding and will receive renewed support to continue their work. Each institute will receive between $28 and $37 million over five years. The eight institutes are being led by Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Chicago, the University of Colorado, the University of Illinois, and the University of Maryland.Each institute involves collaborations between academia, government and private industry. All together, the new funding will support researchers in 19 states at 36 institutions of higher education, according to NSF. Federal collaborators include several U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories, the Defense Department and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. More than 30 U.S. companies are also partnering with the institutes to drive the transfer of basic scientific results into scalable products and technologies."For more than four decades, NSF has been laying the foundational groundwork of research and discovery that is powering today’s modern quantum computing, sensing and communication," said Brian Stone, Performing the Duties of the NSF Director, in the announcement. "It's time for focused activities to leverage that base of knowledge to drive us even farther forward to the benefit of all Americans. The NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes are a next step for us in understanding the quantum world we live in."Quantum-based technologies are based on the principles of physics involving sub-atomic particles. They are not a new idea, going back decades to the work of physicists like Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger. Quantum-based applications can be found in everything from nuclear power and semiconductors, to quantum sensors and data networks, and they can achieve performance levels that far surpass other traditional technologies. NSF gave this example: “ just as an electronic calculator can outperform an abacus, a functional quantum computer could theoretically outperform every supercomputer for certain types of tasks.”MORE FOR YOUNSF is also funding the institutes’ education and training programs to help prepare the U.S. scientific workforce of the future. That training will include hundreds of graduate students, undergraduate students and early career researchers over the next five years as the institutes partner with community colleges, universities and high schools, and community science organizations. The NSF Quantum Leap Challenge InstitutesLed by Harvard University, the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Fault Tolerant Quantum Systems, Architectures and Applications is one of the three new institutes. It will investigate how to make quantum technologies more robust, including the development of new materials that can increase the reliability of quantum sensors and computers.With the University of Illinois in the lead, the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Hybrid Quantum Architectures and Networks (NSF HQAN) was first funded in 2020. It will develop the science and engineering needed for modular quantum computers that are interconnected and can work together. Headed up by Princeton University, the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Manufacturable and Resilient Superconducting Quantum Information Systems is anther one of the new institutes. It will combine materials science, semiconductor fabrication techniques and other disciplines to develop scalable quantum computers through improvements to how the tiny superconducting devices that form their core are connected.Led by Yale University, the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Physics and Engineering of Practical Quantum Error Correction is the third new Quantum Leap Institute to be funded this cycle. It will create more effective methods to correct errors commonly encountered in quantum computing systems, thus increasing their usefulness and scalability.The University of California, Berkeley will lead the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Quantum Computation, which was first funded in 2020. Its aim is to discover and test new quantum algorithms and hardware architecture that can then be used to find new materials and methods for enhancing quantum computation. The University of Chicago will direct the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Quantum Sensing for Biophysics and Bioengineering, an institute that received its initial funding in 2021. It will create sensors such as quantum nano probes that can measure biological processes with great sensitivity and accuracy. Led by the University of Colorado, the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Quantum Systems through Entangled Science and Engineering will focus on developing new precision sensing and measurement techniques. Its work will include quantum simulations, solid-state systems, molecular sensors, and new types of atomic clocks and other innovations. This institute was first funded in 2020.Headed up by the University of Maryland with initial funding received in 2021, the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Robust Quantum Simulation targets the development and applications of quantum simulations that are valuable for scientific investigation of complex phenomena that remain beyond the reach of even the most powerful classical computers. The aim of this team is to push quantum simulations from proof-of-concept demonstrations to useful, large-scale applications.