Investing in the quantum workforce: Two unique NRTs support a new generation of quantum technology leaders

When the "CHIPS and Science Act of 2022" became law, it sparked a wave of investments in emerging quantum technologies. From the academy to the private sector, leaders believe that quantum science has the potential to transform the nation's most vital societal and economic systems, from strengthening health care delivery to ensuring national security. But to harness that potential and build national competitiveness in the field, the United States must invest in a new generation of researchers equipped with the skills and knowledge to drive discoveries.

It's a challenge the U.S. National Science Foundation Research Traineeship Program (NRT) is committed to addressing by funding research institutions that are transforming and innovating STEM graduate education in quantum science. While quantum discoveries are being made at a rapid pace, these NRTs are preparing a new generation of quantum leaders to transform ideas and research into powerful technological solutions.

At The Ohio State University, an emerging, convergent NRT addresses quantum innovation

For professor Jay Gupta, principal investigator of an innovative NRT at The Ohio State University, the very nature of quantum information science is interdisciplinary. Harnessing the power of this emerging field simply won't be possible without crosscutting collaboration between disciplines. To support that kind of convergence through an NRT, Gupta and his team made the intentional decision to do something different: Their project is one of only a few in the country not based on one academic department. Instead, the program mirrors the interdisciplinary nature of quantum technology itself.

"The Quantum Information Science and Engineering (QISE) program is interdisciplinary. As an emerging field, it has roots in physics and electrical engineering and now in computer science engineering. But in the future, it's going to need to leverage advances in materials, in chemistry, and in math. So, it just made the most sense to create something that will foster interdisciplinary research as much as possible without being subject to the traditional constraints of graduate education. That was the key principle that we started with," shared Gupta. "We had the ambitious proposal to launch a completely standalone graduate program in QISE"

In 2023, NSF awarded the ambitious idea a $3 million NRT grant to establish master's and doctorate degrees in QISE. The OSU NRT team features faculty leaders in a wide range of departments, from physics, chemistry and mathematics to computer science, electrical engineering and materials science. In addition to a comprehensive curriculum, trainees will take part in industry internships while developing skills essential to success in the workplace, including ethics, technical writing, communication and more.

While the project is still in its foundational phase, Gupta and his team are designing their NRT to provide a uniquely diverse pool of trainees with cutting-edge, hands-on quantum training. By breaking down some of the barriers associated with traditional graduate education, he believes this project will model new ways to develop a workforce prepared to capture the raw potential of QISE.

"I often say the field is where artificial intelligence was 10 or 15 years ago. I think there's a lot of recognition that we can see transformative societal impact through this technology. It could dramatically change how computation works for security and in finance. It could help us simulate very complex systems to better understand global weather, climate patterns or molecule dynamics in living cells. It could help us sense electric or magnetic fields with extremely high precision. There are really broad potential impacts. That's why major companies like Google and IBM are also investing heavily in this space," he explained.

"I think we have an opportunity to develop a new field without a lot of structural barriers to educational and workforce participation — which is really exciting. In traditional disciplines, there are so many more rigid expectations. The NRT provides us with an opportunity to rethink how we do graduate education," said Gupta.

Leveraging Ohio State research strengths, the QISE NRT will focus on semiconductors — a major federal priority vital to nearly every sector of society, from the electronics we use daily to national defense systems. In recent years, the university has developed research programs on semiconductors at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, spurred by regional investments by companies such as Intel. Gupta shares that the NRT will plug directly into this work, supporting nationwide efforts to develop a thriving American semiconductor workforce.

"Right now, a leading platform that's being pursued by companies like IBM and Google is based on superconducting circuits. However, these only work at low temperatures, and the type of scaling we've seen with conventional transistors is not feasible. That's created a whole parallel thrust in quantum research on developing qubits that you could scale to much larger numbers and developing the algorithms and the protocols if you did have them," explained Gupta.

"While these things are being studied in parallel, one goal of our program is to increase the connections between these parallel research areas. In engineering language, that's called co-design." The NRT, Gupta shares, will approach some of these research questions to prepare trainees for potential careers in one of the most critical areas of technology.

As Gupta and his team work toward recruiting their first trainee cohort, they are thinking through their objectives for the months and years ahead. After their curriculum is finalized, they will focus on deepening their relationships with industry, ensuring NRT trainees can gain valuable experience in the field. However, Gupta says the team's core vision centers on innovating graduate education by giving students more autonomy to determine their own pathways.

"Particularly in QISE, I think the field is advancing so quickly that we can get out of date quickly. Often, students will learn some of the technical content much faster than faculty can. I want our program to establish a culture where the students are more active in determining their education, where they can take more ownership over their training and their research."

That, he says, is what’s needed to allow the next generation of quantum leaders to harness the power of this technology.

At San José State University, a uniquely collaborative NRT lifts quantum engineering

In 2020, Hilary Hurst, a theoretical physics researcher, was developing a first-of-its-kind master’s degree program in quantum technology at San José State University. As part of the California State University system, San José State serves an extremely diverse student body: over 60% of students are Asian or Hispanic, and many are first-generation college students. With Silicon Valley a stone's throw away, Hurst and her team wanted to provide students with the kind of accelerated training that would open doors to new careers in QISE.

When Colorado School of Mines (Mines) reached out about partnering on an NRT to support an emerging quantum workforce, it felt like perfect synergy.

"The fact that the Mines program was housed in the division of graduate education aligned with our goals to create new pathways in graduate education for quantum information science," said Hurst. "One of the things that makes our program unique is it's a collaboration between institutions, which is a less common model but has been an incredible asset for our students."

Partnering with Mines, she explained, has created unprecedented opportunities for trainees to engage with researchers and doctorate students at a research-intensive institution. The capstone of the NRT for San José State trainees is spending a semester at Mines, diving deeper into quantum technology research.

"There's so much research going on at San Jose State. But at the end of the day, we're still primarily an undergraduate-serving institution, and we don't have the same research culture that an R1 institution has — which comes with both advantages and disadvantages," she said. "Having our NRT students interact with Ph.D. students at Mines and learn about their experiences has been so interesting because they come back more motivated to do their research. They have the chance to engage with a wider range of people who are interested in what they are interested in — including Ph.D. students but also people working in the industry. It's hard to quantify the impact, but they really experience a kind of empowerment that's invaluable."

Along with the chance to experience Mines, San José State trainees also absorb the advantages provided by their home university. Those include a deeply committed team of faculty members and an advanced and innovative curriculum drawing on a wide range of disciplines. Trainees gain advanced knowledge and skills in quantum science that are highly applicable to the research challenges facing private and public sector organizations today.

"The way we teach quantum has not changed in 30 years, maybe even longer. It's generally only taught to physicists, and that's a huge problem if you're talking about scaling of any technology. Ultimately, to address our challenges, quantum training needs to be applied in engineering. Our goal with this project was to build bridges between those departments, to provide workforce development on an accelerated timeline," said Hurst.

"An average Ph.D. in physics is six or seven years. That's really too much time in terms of where these technologies are going and what the workforce needs are. You don't necessarily need a Ph.D. in physics to address major quantum research problems — but you do need the vocabulary of quantum systems and people who can speak to both those worlds," Hurst said.

Stepping directly into the workplace is also part of the NRT experience at San José State. As part of the program, trainees can engage in research at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which focuses on strengthening national and global security. The NRT team also facilitates a workshop at the lab that provides students with an introduction to superconducting quantum computers and opportunities to engage with lab researchers. Currently, they are exploring possibilities for bringing Mines students to San José State to explore research with California-based companies and national labs.

NRT trainees find inspiration in the quantum community

The opportunity to build connections with the quantum technology community has been, for two San José State NRT trainees, a powerful career-shaping experience.

Brendan Stork, part of the NRT's first cohort, has focused his graduate research on the properties of high-temperature superconducting materials. With plans to pursue work in industry rather than academia, his experience in the traineeship offered unique and invaluable opportunities to engage interdisciplinary researchers in the field.

"I think it was important to have a broad experience of meeting and working with people within the realm of quantum technology, as well as a space to develop my own skillset. I think I'll be able to transfer that and succeed in ways I otherwise wouldn't if I didn't have this experience," said Stork, who believes the NRT's interdisciplinary model is essential to advancing quantum technology.

"I think it's crucial to encourage interdisciplinary action. To manipulate things at that level demands a full spectrum of human knowledge — electrical engineers, computer scientists, physicists and people who are specifically in the realm of quantum information, who have that background and know how to implement the appropriate algorithms and know where the trajectory of things might be going. It's essential to the whole process."

James Saslow, who recently returned from his semester at Mines, agreed that being immersed in the quantum community — among experts in a range of disciplines — was inspiring. 

"To achieve the quantum dream, as I like to call it, or fully realize quantum technology to benefit society, we need experts in all fields. It's impossible to kind of solve these quantum problems riding solo — you need a team spanning diverse backgrounds to come together and solve challenges,” he said.

So far, the NRT experience has allowed Saslow to explore his core research questions more deeply centered on the utility of entanglement, which occurs when two particles become quantumly entangled.

"In addition to sharpening my technical skills, I've had many meaningful discussions with some of my peers and professors, which have influenced the trajectory of where I'm going with my career. I was able to gain that perspective that led me to the path I'm on now," said Saslow.

"This traineeship has really helped me kind of prove to myself that I could do more interdisciplinary work than I thought I could. I'm a physicist by training, and I guess I've always had a voice in the back of my head that says, you're a physicist; you can't do electrical engineering; you can't do computer science. Through this traineeship, I’ve proven to myself that I can play those roles," said Saslow.

Hurst shares that the NRT has been a crucial part of San José State's emerging leadership in quantum training. The team's focus now is on making the NRT more visible, recruiting new and diverse trainees, and building toward long-term sustainability. Continued investments in innovative graduate education, she says, will support the next generation of quantum leaders.

"We really want to be the centerpiece of CSU's system for quantum research. Our goal is to leverage the NRT to continue to expand our resources and research capabilities — to establish a quantum technology and training lab center on campus, to obtain major research instrumentation grants and to have qubits on campus, which is something that very few universities can. Realizing that would ensure undergraduates from all around the CSU system can come to us for their master's degree, get some strong hands-on training, and then go out into industry or to Ph.D. programs," she said.

"The NRT provides an incredible jumping-off point for building that vision."