This is a preview issue of Quantum Campus, which shares the latest in quantum science and technology. Read by more than 1,500 researchers, we publish on Fridays and are always looking for news from across the country. Want to see your work featured? Submit your ideas to the editor.

NSF Engines semifinalists

The National Science Foundation announced 29 semifinalists in the second wave of its Regional Innovation Engines competition. Quantum-related programs included:

• Advancing Photonics Technologies, led by Princeton University with PI Craig Arnold

• Quantum Connected, led by the University of Chicago with PI David Awschalom

• QuantumCT, led by the University of Connecticut with PI Pamir Alpay

• Quantum Moonshot, led by Elevate Quantum with PI Zachary Yerushalmi

• STELLAR, led by the University of Rochester with PI Thomas Brown

Semifinalists were selected from 71 proposals. The next stage will include virtual site visits, and NSF anticipates announcing the next set of NSF Engines awards in early 2026.

Read the announcement from NSF.

Scientific refugees

Aix-Marseille University’s “Safe Place for Science” program announced that it had made its first eight hires. “In a context where some scientists in the United States may feel threatened or hindered in their research,” the university said that the program is “dedicated to welcoming scientists wishing to pursue their work in an environment conducive to innovation, excellence and academic freedom.”

The program expects to spend about $17.5 million over three years and hire 15 to 20 researchers. It has already drawn about 300 applicants from institutions like Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Yale, Stanford, and NASA.

"Saving our American colleagues and welcoming them is also a way of welcoming and promoting global research," Aix-Marseille's President Eric Berton told Le Monde.

The French government is expected to spend an additional $115 million to attract US talent, and the European Union is developing a similar package worth about $580 million.

These hires were also covered by Politico and The Guardian. Last month, The Register reported on a similar $700 million program coming from Japan.

Simon’s problem

A team from the University of Southern California demonstrated quantum advantage — and an exponential speedup — for a variant of Simon’s problem, which finds a hidden repeating pattern encoded into an unknown 2-to-1 function.

Using two 127-qubit IBM Quantum Eagle processor-powered computers, they “[squeezed] every ounce of performance from the hardware: shorter circuits, smarter pulse sequences, and statistical error mitigation,” according to lead author and PhD student Phattharaporn Singkanipa.

This work was published in Physical Review X.

Quantum-classical hybrid

Researchers at Caltech, IBM, and RIKEN used a quantum-classical approach to determine the ground-state dissociation of molecular nitrogen and the ground state properties of a pair of iron-sulfur clusters. They used an IBM Heron processor and up to 77 qubits to produce upper bounds for the ground-state energy and sparse approximations to the ground-state wave functions, then completed the calculations on RIKEN’s Fugaku supercomputer.

This work was published in Science Advances.

Quickbits

• Andrew Houck, director of DOE’s Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage, named dean of Princeton’s School of Engineering and Applied Science

• The University of Texas at Arlington launches national pilot of quantum education program for high school teachers and students

• IonQ and Kipu Quantum set new industry records for protein folding optimization problems (IOT World Today)

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