The Making of Colorado’s Quantum Valley
Qizhong Liang (PhDPhys’25) squeezes around a worktable tucked into the back corner of a CU physics lab. Spread out in front of him is an intricate arrangement of mirrors, lenses and tubes. But what draws Liang’s attention is what seems to be an empty plastic bag.
“Want to guess what it is?” asks Liang, a doctoral student atbetween CU Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The bag isn’t, in fact, empty but contains something almost precious: breath. Researchers at collected the sample from a child hospitalized with pneumonia. Liang’s tabletop apparatus will generate a powerful laser, known as a frequency comb, to scan the breath sample and identify the unique chemical fingerprints of the molecules floating inside.
Ultimately, Liang and his colleagues hope the laser can serve as a tool to diagnose children with asthma and pneumonia.
But he and his advisor, Jun Ye (PhDPhys’97), aren’t medical professionals. They’re researchers working at the forefront of a field called quantum physics, or the study of matter and energy at its most fundamental level, which deals in the bizarre behavior of things like atoms and electrons.
“This is brand new stuff,” said Liang. He notes that transforming such fundamental science into new technologies is thrilling, but also lonely. “You don’t have many [other experts] to talk to,” he said.
Yet the discipline may soon be a lot less lonely. Across the country, and particularly in Colorado, the momentum around quantum physics is gathering speed. Scientists and engineers are channeling their understanding of the field into technologies that could improve people’s lives.
“It’s a natural progression of the revolution that’s been ongoing since the 1960s,” said Ye, a JILA and NIST fellow and a professor adjoint of physics. “We are just getting faster.”
In Colorado alone, quantum technology companies employ roughly 3,000 people, a number that may jump to more than 10,000 across the Mountain West over the next decade, according to one estimate. Sitting at the center of this revolution is CU Boulder, where researchers have spent decades trying to lasso the quantum realm — earning four Nobel Prizes in physics in the process. The university has launched a suite of programs to turn quantum advancements into real-world technologies. CU is also nearly unmatched among public universities when it comes to training students to become the next generation of quantum workers.
“The reason the state of Colorado has been so successful in quantum has been CU Boulder,” said Heather Lewandowski (PhDPhys’02), a JILA fellow and professor in the Department of Physics. “It goes back to our foundational research and to our training and preparation of students.”
Colorado’s quantum future
This year marked a milestone for CU Boulder and the Mountain West in the global race for quantum innovation and leadership. In July, the coalition Elevate Quantum unlocked more than $127 million in federal and state funding for quantum advancements.
Elevate Quantum is a consortium of 120 organizations across Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming (CU Boulder is the powerhouse partner), with the mission of growing the Mountain West’s prowess as a global leader in the quantum industry.
After applying to the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) Tech Hubs program, the coalition gained its official Tech Hub designation in 2023. Only 31 out of nearly 200 consortia were awarded the designation and could proceed to the program’s second phase: competing for implementation grants. In July, the federal government named Elevate Quantum one of the 12 Tech Hubs that would be awarded funding.
“It’s been a wild year,” said Scott Sternberg, executive director of the CUbit Quantum Initiative, which “convenes, coordinates and catalyzes” the quantum activities on campus. “The challenge is now to continue the fundamental discovery while also engineering quantum products and solutions for economic gain.”
The potential applications are vast. Ye, for example, leads a $25 million effort funded by the National Science Foundation called Quantum Systems through Entangled Science and Engineering (Q-SEnSE). The bread and butter of his lab are atomic clocks — devices that tell time not with gears and hands, but by tracking the natural behavior of electrons. They’re so precise they can measure the change in gravity if you lift them up by just a fraction of a millimeter. One day, he envisions that scientists could use similar quantum devices to, for example, track magma flow deep below Yellowstone National Park, the site of a supervolcano.
Recently, he and his colleagues made groundbreaking work on a type of atomic clock known as a nuclear clock. It uses lasers to trigger, then measure, extremely small shifts in energy occurring within the nuclei of thorium atoms.
Another team of engineers at CU is using frequency comb lasers, similar to those in Ye’s lab, to detect methane leaks above oil and gas operations. Still others are using quantum sensors to map out the activity of the human brain and even search for elusive dark matter — the seemingly invisible substance that binds the universe together.
Quantum work is now expanding on CU Boulder’s East Campus as well, in an initiative funded by the NSF and led by CU’s Scott Diddams, professor of electrical, computer and energy engineering. The $20 million grant will launch a new facility, the National Quantum Nanofab, where researchers and quantum specialists from Colorado and around the country can prototype and build new quantum technology.
The university is also helping to bring something else to Colorado: the next generation of quantum experts.
Quantum leaders of tomorrow
Denali Jah (EngrPhys’25), a senior studying engineering physics and applied math, found his way to physics in high school. He was having a hard time at home, and his physics teacher noticed and made a point of showing Jah how exciting science could be.
“I really appreciated his approach to life in general — it was one of curiosity,” Jah said.
In 2023, Jah joined the university’s first-ever cohort of Quantum Scholars, one of several CU programs encouraging students to take an interest in quantum physics. As part of that program, Jah and fellow undergrad Annaliese Cabra (Math’23) helped to organize the university’s first Quantum Hackathon, in which teams of students compete against each other to solve tricky problems in quantum computing.
Another CU experience, the Quantum Forge, is a year-long course offered through the university’s Department of Physics. It partners students with real quantum businesses in Colorado. Over the span of a year, the students lead a hands-on project for those businesses, such as designing components for an advanced cooling machine known as a “dilution refrigerator.”
Lewandowski, a member of the university’s Physics Education Research Group, noted that the quantum industry is in its infancy — companies are still trying to get a handle on what kind of employees they’ll need. CU Boulder, she said, trains students to be flexible in the field.
“Students can still have their core engineering or physics degree, but you supplement that with a few quantum technology courses, and that can make you very employable,” said Lewandowski.
Jah, for his part, wants to use his new skills to study quantum loop gravity, a trippy theory that seeks to explain how gravity works. He said that quantum physics takes a lot of work, but it’s a path that anyone can follow — as long as they have enough wonder.
“I hope other people can engage in this exploratory process of: How does the world work? Let’s see,” Jah said.
Illustrations by Brian Stauffer