Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre (also known as Quantum Nano Centre, or simply QNC) is a research and development laboratory for quantum information science and nanotechnology at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The facilities are shared by the Waterloo Institute for Quantum Computing, the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology and the Nanotechnology Engineering program at the University of Waterloo. [1]
Construction of the QNC began on June 9, 2008; [2] it was officially opened on September 21, 2012. [3] Funding for the $160 million building was made possible by a $100 million donation from Mike Lazaridis (co-founder of Research In Motion, which has since rebranded as BlackBerry), [4] a $25 million grant from the government of Canada as part of Canada's Economic Action Plan, and a mixture of private donations and university funds. [3] [5]
The Quantum Nano Centre is 285,000-square-foot (25,650-square-metre) in size. [1] It includes classrooms for instructional teaching and laboratories for research and development. The facilities operate with control for vibration, humidity, electromagnetic radiation, and temperature. Cleanroom facilities are constructed upon a separate building foundation to keep vibrations at less than a micron. [1]
The QNC is composed of two main buildings designated for the Waterloo Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) and Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN). The building for IQC is designed with outer windows of varying reflectivity to symbolize quantum superposition while the building for WIN features a hexagonal honeycomb lattice structure inspired by the hexagonal carbon structure of nanotubes. These two buildings are joined together by a six-story central atrium. The building also features convertible rooms called "mind spaces" to accommodate collaborative activities including conferences, public lectures, and meetings. [1]
The University of Waterloo is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on 404 hectares of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also operates three satellite campuses and four affiliated university colleges. The university offers academic programs administered by six faculties and thirteen faculty-based schools. Waterloo operates the largest post-secondary co-operative education program in the world, with over 20,000 undergraduate students enrolled in the university's co-op program. Waterloo is a member of the U15, a group of research-intensive universities in Canada.
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics is an independent research centre in foundational theoretical physics located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in 1999. The institute's founding and major benefactor is Canadian entrepreneur and philanthropist Mike Lazaridis.
Mihal "Mike" Lazaridis is a Greek Canadian businessman, investor in quantum computing technologies, and co-founder of Research In Motion, which created and manufactured the BlackBerry wireless handheld device. In November 2009, Canadian Business ranked Lazaridis as the 11th wealthiest Canadian, with an estimated net worth of CA$2.9 billion.
The Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences is the first of the five Nanoscale Science Research Centers sponsored by the United States Department of Energy. It is located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and is a collaborative research facility for the synthesis, characterization, theory/ modeling/ simulation, and design of nanoscale materials. It is co-located with Spallation Neutron Source.
James Laurence Balsillie is a Canadian businessman and philanthropist. He was the former chair and co-chief executive officer of the Canadian technology company Research In Motion (BlackBerry), which at its 2011 peak made US$19.9 billion in annual sales.
Thomas Anthony Brzustowski, was a Canadian engineer, academic, and civil servant.
The National Research Council of Canada Nanotechnology Research Centre is a research institution located on the University of Alberta main campus, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Its primary purpose is nanoscience research.
The Faculty of Science is one of six faculties at the University of Waterloo.
The London Centre for Nanotechnology is a multidisciplinary research centre in physical and biomedical nanotechnology in London, United Kingdom. It brings together three institutions that are referents in nanotechnology, University College London, Imperial College London and King's College London. It was conceived from the outset with a management structure allowing for a clear focus on exploitation and commercialisation. Although based at UCL's campus in Bloomsbury, the LCN includes research in departments of Imperial's South Kensington campus and in King's Strand campus.
The Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) is an affiliate scientific research institute of the University of Waterloo located in Waterloo, Ontario with a multidisciplinary approach to the field of quantum information processing. IQC was founded in 2002 primarily through a donation made by Mike Lazaridis and his wife Ophelia whose substantial donations have continued over the years. The institute is now located in the Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre and the Research Advancement Centre at the University of Waterloo.
The Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN) is located at the University of Waterloo and is co-located with the Institute for Quantum Computing in the Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre (QNC). WIN is currently headed by Dr. Sushanta Mitra.
Raymond Laflamme, OC, FRSC is a Canadian theoretical physicist and founder and until mid 2017, was the director of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo. He is also a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo and an associate faculty member at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Laflamme is currently a Canada Research Chair in Quantum Information. In December 2017, he was named as one of the appointees to the Order of Canada.
The Faculty of Engineering is one of six faculties at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It has 8,698 undergraduate students, 2176 graduate students, 334 faculty and 52,750 alumni making it the largest engineering school in Canada with external research funding from 195 Canadian and international partners exceeding $86.8 million. Ranked among the top 50 engineering schools in the world, the faculty of engineering houses eight academic units and offers 15 bachelor's degree programs in a variety of disciplines.
Michele Mosca is co-founder and deputy director of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, researcher and founding member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and professor of mathematics in the department of Combinatorics & Optimization at the University of Waterloo. He has held a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Quantum Computation since January 2002, and has been a scholar for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research since September 2003. Mosca's principal research interests concern the design of quantum algorithms, but he is also known for his early work on NMR quantum computation together with Jonathan A. Jones.
Kang Lung Wang is recognized as the discoverer of chiral Majorana fermions by IUPAP. Born in Lukang, Changhua, Taiwan, in 1941, Wang received his BS (1964) degree from National Cheng Kung University and his MS (1966) and PhD (1970) degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1970 to 1972 he was the Assistant Professor at MIT. From 1972 to 1979, he worked at the General Electric Corporate Research and Development Center as a physicist/engineer. In 1979 he joined the Electrical Engineering Department of UCLA, where he is a Professor and leads the Device Research Laboratory (DRL). He served as Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering at UCLA from 1993 to 1996. His research activities include semiconductor nano devices, and nanotechnology; self-assembly growth of quantum structures and cooperative assembly of quantum dot arrays Si-based Molecular Beam Epitaxy, quantum structures and devices; Nano-epitaxy of hetero-structures; Spintronics materials and devices; Electron spin and coherence properties of SiGe and InAs quantum structures for implementation of spin-based quantum information; microwave devices. He was the inventor of strained layer MOSFET, quantum SRAM cell, and band-aligned superlattices. He holds 45 patents and published over 700 papers. He is a passionate teacher and has mentored hundreds of students, including MS and PhD candidates. Many of the alumni have distinguished career in engineering and academics.
Doug Fregin is a Canadian entrepreneur and engineer. He is best known as the co-founder of Research In Motion alongside his childhood friend, Mike Lazaridis.
The Sydney Nanoscience Hub is a nanoscience facility of The University of Sydney Nano Institute at the University of Sydney in Camperdown, Sydney, Australia. The laboratories in the building are isolated from outside influences such as vibration, electromagnetic fluctuations, temperature and atmospheric pressure variation, the air in the laboratories is also filtered to be free of dust.
Thomas Jennewein is an Austrian physicist who conducts research in quantum communication and quantum key distribution. He has taught as an associate professor at the University of Waterloo and the Institute for Quantum Computing in Waterloo, Canada since 2009. He earned his PhD under Anton Zeilinger at the University of Vienna in 2002, during which time he performed experiments on Bell's inequality and cryptography with entangled photons. His current work at the Institute for Quantum Computing focuses on satellite-based free space quantum key distribution, with the goal of creating a global quantum network.
Anne Lise Broadbent is a mathematician at the University of Ottawa who won the 2016 Aisenstadt Prize for her research in quantum computing, quantum cryptography, and quantum information. As of July 2024, she holds the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Quantum Communications and Cryptography.