The Boeing Quantum Creators Prize (BQCP) recognizes early-career researchers for work that moves the field of quantum information science and engineering in new directions and aims to increase diversity in the field. It is a mission that began in 2021, expanded in 2023 thanks to a $3.5 million investment from Boeing — and will continue as a fourth set of awardees presents their research at the 2024 Chicago Quantum Summit in October.
Since 2021, 41 quantum scientists have won the prize. In recognition of accomplishment, awardees receive $3,500 and the opportunity to present their work in front of the global leaders in attendance at the Chicago Quantum Summit.
Today, six previous winners provide updates about how their careers have advanced — and share how the prize helped get them there.
Önder Gül (2021) Current role and affiliation: Quantum Device Engineer at QuTech
Creator’s Prize research topic: Induced superconductivity in fractional quantum Hall
Önder Gül
Q: How has the Boeing Quantum Creators Prize advanced your work?
A: The BQCP increased my visibility; allowed me to interact with other quantum researchers who are from different fields but similar stages of career; and to present my results to a diverse audience, which is always fun and insightful!
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I recently switched to a slightly different field to work on another quantum information platform: spin quantum bits in semiconductors. Here, single charges are trapped in a semiconducting material by electric fields. The spin quantum property of these charges is then manipulated by dc and high-frequency voltages, allowing for processing quantum information.
Q: What's next for your research?
A: An important goal concerning quantum information platforms is to increase the number of quantum bits to realize quantum advantage; that is, processing information faster than is classically possible with conventional (super)computers. So far quantum advantage has been demonstrated for calculating (solving) problems with little practical relevance using processors containing a small number of quantum bits. Increasing the number of quantum bits may allow for solving relevant problems that require unrealistic resources on conventional computers. Another equally important goal is to be able to correct quantum errors that occur during calculation. My research on spin quantum bits also focuses on these two points: increasing the number of qubits and improving the device design to realize quantum error correction.
Q: What initially drew you to quantum research?
A: During my studies in electrical engineering, my curiosity prompted me to ask similar questions in every topic I was introduced to: “But how does it work?” or “What is the mechanism behind this electronic building block?” I gradually realized I needed to dive into semiconductor physics for the answers I was looking for, and from there on into the quantum theory of matter. A natural starting point for research was experiments on electronic nanostructures. I still remember spamming several physics professors for an internship in their lab despite having no connection to the department myself. Only one lab had a positive response but one eventually turned out to be a very good fit! I continue this research line to this day.
Judy (Zhurun) Ji (2022) Current role and affiliation: Panofsky Fellow at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center; will join the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in fall 2025
Creator’s Prize research topic: Opening a ‘nano’ window to the world of quantum optoelectronics
Judy (Zhurun) Ji
Q: How has the Boeing Quantum Creators Prize advanced your work?
A: The BQCP is a meaningful affirmation of my goal to contribute to the quantum field. The “creator” aspect of the award resonates deeply with my desire to engage with interdisciplinary projects, and it motivates me to keep pushing boundaries and exploring new ideas.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m currently focused on nanoscale microwave sensing of fractional quantum Hall states in 2D materials, and I’m also exploring new sensing methods that combine electrical, optical, and quantum sensing modalities to study quantum materials, especially topological states. It’s an exciting continuation of “creating” within the quantum world.
Q: What's next for your research?
A: Next year, I’ll be starting my group at MIT. This new role presents both challenges and opportunities, particularly in exploring quantum materials within the broader context of the second quantum revolution. I’m eager to continue my research, build a team, and hopefully make meaningful contributions to the field. The future holds so much potential, and I’m excited to see where it takes us.
Q: What initially drew you to quantum research?
A: My first quantum mechanics class, centered on the Stern-Gerlach experiment, opened my eyes to the philosophical depth of quantum mechanics. The idea that at such small scales, the rules we take for granted in the classical world no longer apply, was incredibly intriguing. Quantum mechanics challenges our understanding and invites us into a world where things behave in completely unexpected ways, which was so appealing that it drew me into this field.
Kevin Singh (2023) Current role and affiliation: Assistant Professor of Physics at The Ohio State University
Creator’s Prize research topic: A dual-species Rydberg array of rubidium and cesium atoms
Kevin Singh
Q: How has the Boeing Quantum Creators Prize advanced your work?
A: As scientists, it is important that our discoveries in the laboratory are communicated to the public and shared with all. The BQCP has been a major boon for broadcasting the work of myself and my colleagues to a larger audience beyond academia and for helping facilitate rewarding conversations about the most promising developments within the field of quantum information science and engineering.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Right now, I am working on setting up my own research group at The Ohio State University! My lab will work on building next-generation quantum devices constructed from arrays of individually controlled neutral atoms. These devices help us study fundamental quantum-mechanical phenomena and give us insight into how to construct future computing technologies that benefit from quantum-mechanical effects. If you want to join me (as an undergrad, graduate student, or postdoctoral researcher), shoot me a message!
Q: What's next for your research?
A: The next frontier of control over these devices is scaling them up to thousands or tens of thousands of qubits (quantum bits). Fully controlled and programmable quantum systems of this size require us to develop new scientific paradigms to predict, understand, and benchmark their behavior. It's a very exciting time!
Q: What initially drew you to quantum research?
A: The thrill that comes with adventure! Quantum researchers are explorers, and the experiments we build are magnifying glasses that let us look directly into a fascinating world ruled by quantum mechanics. I find it remarkable that the spectacular quantum phenomena we study lie under the hood of everything we see around us.
Hsin-Yuan (Robert) Huang (2021) Current role and affiliation: Research Scientist at Google Quantum AI; Visiting Scientist at MIT; Assistant Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) starting fall 2025
Creator’s Prize research topic: Provably efficient machine learning for quantum many-body problems
Hsin-Yuan (Robert) Huang
Q: How has the Boeing Quantum Creators Prize advanced your work?
A: The Boeing Quantum Creators Prize has significantly enhanced the visibility of my research, allowing me to share our findings with a broader audience who could potentially benefit from our results. This increased exposure has been invaluable in fostering new collaborations and sparking discussions across various fields.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Currently, I'm investigating the fundamental limits of learning about quantum dynamics. One intriguing question we're exploring is whether extremely-short-time quantum dynamics could mimic the behavior of much longer, more complex quantum dynamics. Understanding this question would lead to more efficient methods for studying quantum systems, demonstrate quantum advantages in learning about simple physical systems, and help prove the hardness in experimentally observing certain basic physical properties, such as complexity, entanglement, and topological order.
Q: What's next for your research?
A: A key finding from my previous work is the substantial, provable quantum advantage in learning about quantum data. This implies that quantum machines can uncover physical phenomena in our quantum universe much more efficiently than classical computers. However, so far, we've seen limited quantum advantages in learning about classical data. An important next step is to explore the potential for demonstrating provable quantum advantages in learning about classical data, which could have far-reaching implications across various fields.
Q: What initially drew you to quantum research?
A: My journey into quantum research began during my undergraduate years, between 2014 and 2018, when I was working on classical machine learning. We observed that despite significant algorithmic improvements, computational power largely determined the intelligence of machine learning models — a trend corroborated by recent developments in large language models. This realization led me to wonder: could quantum computers achieve even greater intelligence compared to classical computer-based machine learning models? This fascinating possibility inspired me to delve into quantum computing research, exploring its potential to revolutionize our understanding of intelligence and computation. This fundamental inquiry continues to be the driving force behind my research endeavors.
Adam Shaw (2023) Current role and affiliation: Science Fellow at Stanford University
Creator’s Prize research topic: Fingerprints of randomness on a 60-atom quantum simulator
Adam Shaw
Q: How has the Boeing Quantum Creators Prize advanced your work?
A: One of the impactful aspects of the BQCP was being able to attend the Chicago Quantum Summit, which was one of the first times I’ve seen industry, academic, and in particular governmental interests all coalesce around quantum science in one place. It was great having conversations and making connections there with a wide spectrum of researchers and regulators in the field. It’s important to have venues that break out of the single-minded focus of many research conferences, in order to give broader context to our work.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Having defended my PhD from Caltech in the spring, I’m now off to a postdoc as a Stanford Science Fellow working with Jon Simon to rethink how we build the types of quantum computers I worked on in my PhD. The quantum computing systems I work on are based on manipulating the states of single atoms with laser beams, but often the lasers are an after-thought, besides being a control tool. For my new project, we’re refocusing on the hybrid light-atom system, and redesigning the experiment in order to highlight many emergent features that come when you draw on a broader range of quantum engineering techniques.
Q: What’s next for your research?
A: While I’ll only be starting in the fall of 2025, I’m already excited to start exploring new phenomena and techniques our new platform will uniquely allow. For instance, preliminary evidence shows that it will allow us to improve the speed of reading out the quantum state by orders-of-magnitude over standard techniques, and in the near term will allow us to simulate many interesting quantum problems which are intractable on existing systems.
Q: What initially drew you to quantum research?
A: I was drawn to physics by a materials science survey class in my freshman year of college, but I found that it didn’t hold my interest because I had trouble seeing universal behavior from the zoo of materials being researched for a wide range of applications. I became interested in quantum science, and atomic physics more specifically, because it offered what I saw as a unique opportunity to distill the behavior of nature down into its most pristine form, where the entire goal of the experiment is to drown out the noise and mess of the external, material world and focus on pure quantum behavior. Trying to improve our ability to isolate a pure quantum system from its environment has been, and will continue to be, one of the dominant aspects of my research for that reason.
Abhinav Deshpande (2022) Current role and affiliation: Research Scientist at IBM
Creator’s Prize research topic: The complexity of simulating quantum dynamics
Abhinav Deshpande
Q: How has the Boeing Quantum Creators Prize advanced your work?
A: Being among the Boeing Quantum Creators Prize winners was a huge boost for me in terms of the recognition it brought. I was lucky to be able to network with other prize winners at the event and researchers in the greater Chicago area. The prize also helped validate that the questions I seek to answer are of interest beyond the relatively small community I usually interact with, and helped reassure me of my place in the larger quantum community.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am now at IBM Quantum working to advance theoretical quantum computer science. This involves coming up with and analyzing quantum algorithms and using the lens of complexity theory to study computational problems.
Q: What's next for your research?
A: The grand quest that motivates me in my research is to identify the secret sauce that gives rise to dramatic quantum speedups over classical computers. Doing so would help us identify more readily in any context whether and by how much a quantum algorithm could help. I am working on understanding small facets of this large problem by studying computation in restricted settings, or in worlds where the rules of computation are similar, but different from our own.
Q: What initially drew you to quantum research?
A: As a physicist, my motivation has always been to understand the natural world around us. I was drawn to research in quantum computing when I realized that certain questions that are seemingly “merely” about computers are in fact deep questions about physics. This realization sparked a profound sense of awe and appreciation for the tools of theoretical computer science and their applicability to studying quantum physics. Prior to this realization, I was initially drawn to studying quantum mechanics and quantum information because I felt like I did not appreciate enough the measurement postulate of quantum mechanics and was searching for satisfactory explanations.
