Town Hall and Workshop Ponders Future of Quantum Technology

Five years ago, the quantum community met to prepare the first document regarding a vision to develop a quantum internet in the United States. In late February, the group met again to celebrate the advancements that have been made and to envision the near-future possibilities for quantum technology.

The Quantum Networks Town Hall and Domestic Cooperation Workshop took place February 27 and 28 at the SUNY Global Center in midtown Manhattan. The event, a component of Stony Brook’s landmark quantum science collaboration with Columbia University, Yale University and Brookhaven National Laboratory, brought together 93 participants representing 45 different organizations from around the world, including top quantum researchers and collaborators from key industry, university and government partners.

“The purpose of this event was to explore how to coordinate a federated quantum network infrastructure and enable members to use the SCY-QNet (Stony Brook–Columbia–Yale Quantum Network) laboratory,” said Eden Figueroa, Stony Brook Presidential Innovation Endowed Professor and director of the Center for Distributed Quantum Processing. “This Town Hall meeting brought together our community to foster open scientific dialogue and collect baseline data to aid in the development of a diverse workforce development plan. To do that, we need the participation of the entire quantum information science and engineering community.”

The first day featured presentations from experts in the quantum area, including virtual speakers from China, Singapore, Germany and Sweden. After a morning of presentations, Figueroa led a Quantum Virtual Laboratory, and attendees then enjoyed a poster session featuring the work of students from Stony Brook, Columbia and Yale.

The second day, led by government partners at NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), featured presentations highlighting various aspects of quantum networks and ended with a panel discussion, “Facilitating Industry Collaboration.”

The event aimed to gather valuable input in preparation for the upcoming National Quantum Virtual Laboratory (NQVL) design proposal due April 2025. “This event showcased the crucial partnerships that will drive the future quantum internet,” said Nina Maung, senior associate vice president for research. “Stony Brook is primed to be a national leader in this revolutionary field.” 

Figueroa said quantum networks represent a leap forward in quantum communication technology, promising unprecedented levels of security and efficiency. “I think we all can agree that one of the most important technical realizations that humanity has ever been able to do is creating the internet,” he said. “The information transmitted on the internet is laser pulses flowing across fibers. But they suffer the same challenges as drivers on a highway; if there’s too many of these laser pulses at the same time, then you get a bottleneck.”

Using photons instead of pulses can change that.

“Quantum technology will help us take it to the next level while using the backbone of the internet that we already have,” Figueroa said. “It is envisioned to be an advanced quantum network and will connect quantum processing units located across all the participant institutions via quantum entanglement transmitted using quantum repeaters.” 

Figueroa said the project, announced in 2024 and led by Stony Brook, has the potential to boost the scaling of quantum computing systems via quantum networks, forming a first version of the quantum internet. 

Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the initiative marks a pivotal moment in advancing Quantum Information Science and Technology (QIST) in the United States. The team’s proposal, NQVL:QSTD: Pilot: Wide-Area Quantum Network To Demonstrate Quantum Advantage (SCY-QNet), targets to design and implement a 10-node quantum network connecting state-of-the-art laboratories at Stony Brook University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Columbia University and Yale University, creating the SCY-QNet.

— Robert Emproto