Major funding for Prof. Alexandre Blais' group: continuation of an important international collaboration confirmed

The US Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced the renewal of the Quantum Systems Accelerator (QSA) for a period of five years, as part of a US$625 million investment to support five national quantum information science research centers. This renewal confirms the strategic importance of the QSA in the global race to develop quantum technologies.

A strong scientific track record

Since its creation in 2020, the QSA has enabled Professor Alexandre Blais' team to contribute to major advances in circuit quantum electrodynamics, a field in which he is recognized as a pioneer.

This partnership has also supported groundbreaking work, such as that carried out by Marie-Frédérique Dumas and Benjamin Groleau-Paré, which resolved an issue that had remained unresolved in the field for 20 years. In less than a year, their publication had already been cited more than 75 times, highlighting its impact on the scientific community.

Alexandre Blais, Scientific Director of the Institut quantique.

The QSA also supports Éric Giguère of the Centre de calcul scientifique (CCS), lead developer of the open source QuTiP library, which is used by virtually the entire international quantum community. In recent years, thanks to QSA funding, the development and maintenance of this library has been able to resume, strengthening the software infrastructure on an international scale.

A vision for the next five years

For Professor Alexandre Blais, this renewal is exceptional recognition of the quality of research being conducted in Sherbrooke and illustrates the importance of international collaboration in the development of technologies such as quantum computers.

This five-year grant has the ambitious goal of creating a quantum computer that can be used for scientific research. Being part of this consortium will allow us to work with several of the world's leading teams in the field.