Assistant Professor Alicia Kollár has been awarded a grant by the Air Force’s Young Investigator Research Program (YIP). She is one of 36 early-career researchers around the US to receive the three-year, $450,000 award.

Kollár plans to develop a new breed of superconducting devices for studying quantum computing and quantum simulation. The devices will build upon an already successful platform—superconducting qubits connected together by photonic cavities—to create new interactions between qubits and new ways of connecting qubits together.

“These systems realize artificial photonic materials for microwave photons with unprecedented levels of versatility and control,” says Kollár. “They can even be used to make lattices which cannot be found in nature, including things as exotic as lattices in curved hyperbolic spaces. Thanks to the generous support of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, we can now truly embark on harnessing this effect for new types of interactions and spin models.”

The YIP received more than 215 proposals this year, for research into everything from basic physics to machine learning and network science. Xiaodi Wu, a Fellow of the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science and an assistant professor of computer science at UMD, was also awarded a YIP grant this year.

Original story by Chris Cesare: https://jqi.umd.edu/news/kollar-receives-air-force-young-investigator-grant