Director's Message to UMIACS February '25

The first newsletter of 2025 is certainly looking toward the future, with a half-dozen stories highlighting research and scholarship by faculty, postdocs and students involved in quantum computing and quantum information science.

If you haven’t noticed, “quantum” is getting a lot of attention lately. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore visited our campus earlier this year to announce a bold initiative to turn the region into the “Capital of Quantum.” This includes an initial investment of $27.5 million in the governor’s FY 2026 proposed budget.

UMIACS has long held an important role in the university’s quantum enterprise. Two of the leading quantum efforts on our campus—the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS) and the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Robust Quantum Simulation (RQS)—fall under the umbrella of our institute, with UMIACS staff providing administrative and technical support as needed.

UMIACS also supports more than a dozen federal scientists (mostly from the National Institute for Standards and Technology) that are embedded full-time on the UMD campus, with the majority working in QuICS and RQS. We believe that this rich federal/academic partnership is essential for making significant progress as we work toward building quantum computing systems that can revolutionize advances in drug and chemical research, financial modeling, communication networks, and more.

Looking ahead, we hope to continue to expand our efforts in quantum—working closely with our federal partners, other researchers on our campus, and educators across the state interested in bringing quantum learning activities to their classrooms.

Collectively, we will make the state of Maryland the Capital of Quantum, setting the stage for new discoveries in quantum computing that, while at first may have seemed like science fiction, are now becoming a scientific reality.

—Mihai Pop, UMIACS director