memq, a startup founded by Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) and Argonne National Laboratory researchers, was recently selected to receive the George Shultz Innovation Fund award, managed by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
memq is developing an integrated quantum photonics platform that will enable quantum communication between computers at distances orders of magnitude greater than what is available today. Manish Kumar Singh, PhD’22 leads the startup. The team includes Sean Sullivan, a researcher at Argonne National Laboratory, and Supratik Guha, professor at the Pritzker Molecular Engineering and senior advisor to Argonne Physical Sciences and Engineering directorate.
A “quantum system on a chip,” the startup’s platform would enable completely un-hackable communication protocols at distances spanning 1000s of kilometers using devices called quantum repeaters.
“We want to bring in all components of a quantum system on the same chip,” Singh explained. “That’s where the true power of the platform really is: instead of trying to connect 20 different components, we can bring it all together on a single chip.”
The platform also is compatible with existing telecommunication infrastructures in addition to being “fab compatible,” Singh explained – which means that the material can go into an existing semiconductor fabrication plant and leverage existing nanofabrication technologies.
This month, Singh defended his thesis at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering to receive his PhD in quantum science and engineering. He is also a trained chemical engineer with a background in the semiconductor industry. This experience gave him insight into scaling technology and bringing it to market – knowledge he has applied to memq.
“Having industry experience conditioned me to look for opportunities,” said Singh. “That challenge of taking research and making a product that is useful for consumers got demystified, which became useful later.”
When he came to the University to start his PhD, Singh began looking at silicon-compatible solid-state hosts that could be used to place potential qubits, or quantum bits, the basic information unit in a quantum computer.