Newswise – The National Research Foundation of South Korea (NRF) has awarded two professors from the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) $1 million to jointly lead the establishment of a joint South Korean-US research center on quantum error correction .
Prof. David Awschalom and Prof. Liang Jiang will serve as Co-Principal Investigators for the Center for Quantum Error Correction, which aims to improve the fidelity of networked quantum computing systems. Funded for five years, the center continues the long history of scientific collaboration between the United States and South Korea.
Seung-Woo Lee of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology’s Center for Quantum Information will serve as the center’s senior principal investigator.
Lijun Ma of the National Institute of Standard and Technology’s Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) will also serve as co-principal investigator.
“South Korea has an impressive history of creativity and breakthrough innovation in technology, and we look forward to collaborating with its researchers and students to accelerate quantum science,” Avshalom said.
“The US is a leader in many areas of quantum science and technologies, and South Korea has started investing in the development of real-world quantum technologies,” Lee said. “I am sure that the world-renowned US partners and many young talents from Korea will create a great synergy in quantum research in our joint research center.”
Quantum technology, including network-based quantum computing, offers tremendous opportunities ranging from enhanced drug development to ultra-secure information networks. To realize these benefits, significant resources are devoted to solving one of the most pressing technological hurdles in quantum computing: error correction.
Quantum computers process and store information by manipulating quantum states – unique phenomena found at the atomic and subatomic levels. However, these states are extremely delicate, and the tiniest vibration or temperature change is enough to destroy the quantum information stored within, leading to errors.
The Center for Quantum Error Correction aims to address this by developing quantum error correction algorithms to be used in combination with solid-state quantum processors.
“It is an exciting time to work with our Korean collaborators to advance quantum error correction, which is critical for fault-tolerant quantum computing and communications,” Jiang said.
The center was announced Wednesday, September 21 at the Korea-US Science Cooperation Center (KUSCO), along with five other South Korean-US partnerships. These included:
- The Ion Trap Quantum Computing Center with Ewha Womans University and Duke University
- The Spin Quantum Computing Center with Korea University and the California Institute of Technology
- The entanglement-based Quantum Network Center with the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- The Quantum Repeater Center The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and Harvard University
- The Quantum Sensing Center Korea University and the University of California, Santa Barbara and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology