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LabEscape wraps up at the March Meeting

LabEscape finishes up a fabulous run at the APS March Meeting, with over 385 Agents participating in 50 missions to save the world!

Aarya Mehta awarded at the APS March Meeting

Aarya Mehta wins the Top Undergraduate Presenter award at the Future of Physics Days event for a poster on the Vision Project.

Kwiat Group at the APS March Meeting

Kwiat group members express their joy of science -and their latest results- at the 2024 March Meeting in Minneapolis, MN.

World's first Public Quantum Network launched at the Urbana Free Library

Members of the Lorenz and Kwiat Groups introduce the first publicly accessible quantum network! Read more

Connecting with Nobel Laureates at the APS March Meeting

Members of the Kwiat Group had the pleasure of meeting 2022 Physics Nobel Laureates Anton Zeilinger and John F. Clauser at the APS March Meeting 2023.

Our research featured in the Nov/Dec issue of SPIE's Photonics Focus

Read more about current and future efforts in realizing photonic quantum networks.

Paul Kwiat interviewed on The UIUC Talkshow

Watch Paul talk about Quantum Information, photons, and swing dancing!

Colin selected as Mavis Future Faculty Fellow

Colin Lualdi has been selected as a 2022-2023 Mavis Future Faculty Fellow. This program is designed to help current doctoral students become the next generation of engineering faculty. Read more

Kelsey and Colin represent UIUC as Science Officers

Graduate students Kelsey Ortiz and Colin Lualdi hosted a booth titled “Science: The Final Frontier” at the Star Trek: Mission Chicago convention, where they presented demos on applications of science in daily life and beyond. Read more

Colin featured in World Quantum Day video shared by the White House

Watch Colin Lualdi featured on “This is Quantum!”, a World Quantum Day video made by the Q-12 Education Partnership, spearheaded by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and NSF. Link

Colin Lualdi interviewed by CBC Radio on STEM in American Sign Language

Read more about how 5th Year PhD student Colin Lualdi is making quantum science accessible to the Deaf community.

Self-annealing photon detector brings global quantum internet one step closer to feasibility

Read more about CAPSat’s launch into Low Earth orbit (LEO) and its impact on quantum information and communication.

HQAN-affiliated students get a taste of the quantum computing industry

Read More about Kwiat Group undergrad Scott Turro’s internship with Qubitekk, Inc.— a startup devoted to quantum components and systems.

HQAN-affiliated students get a taste of the quantum computing industry

Read more about Kwiat Group undergrad Scott Turro’s internship with Qubitekk, Inc.— a startup devoted to quantum components and systems.

Chicago State University students gain quantum experience through HQAN summer internships

Read more about Gabrielle Jones-Hall’s HQAN (Hybrid Quantum Architectures and Networks) summer internship with Paul Kwiat.

Kwiat Group Among Winners of Million Dollar International Quantum U Tech Accelerator

The Kwiat Group competed against 35 other teams in a three-day virtual pitch competition hosted by the Innovare Advancement Center in Rome, NY and sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Our proposal for quantum-enhanced interferometry was selected to be one of the 17 winners. Read More

Paul Kwiat Named Leader of Communication Thrust of Q-NEXT Center

Paul Kwiat will lead the Quantum Communication thrust of the $115-million Q-NEXT Department of Energy center in support of the developing “quantum economy”. Read More

Paul Kwiat Interviewed in Scientific American on China’s Micius Quantum Satellite

Paul Kwiat shares his thoughts on satellite-based quantum communication. Read More

Student awarded National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship

Second-year PhD student, Andrew Conrad, received a 2020 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship. Andrew follows previous Kwiat Group NDSEG award winners, Alex Hill, Kristina Meier, and Joseph Chapman.

Paul Kwiat Gives Plenary Talk at 2020 CLEO Technical Conference

Paul Kwiat shared his vision for the future of multi-photon quantum processing with the CLEO community during his plenary talk, highlighting key contributions made by the Kwiat Group. Read More

Kwiat Group Represented at Single Photon Workshop in Milan, Italy

Body: Colin Lualdi, Kristina Meier, and Paul Kwiat attended the Single Photon Workshop in Milan, Italy, presenting the time-multiplexed single-photon source, non-degenerate waveguide entanglement source, and detection of single photons with the human eye. Read More

Kwiat Group Sets Single-Photon Generation Record

The Kwiat Group has developed the world’s most efficient single-photon source, using spontaneous parametric downconversion and time-multiplexing techniques, paving the way for large-scale optical quantum information processing. Read More

Kwiat Group Graduate Students Meet Governor Pritzker

Andrew Conrad and Colin Lualdi, graduate students in the Kwiat Quantum Information Group, had the opportunity to meet the Governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, in anticipation of the state’s $100 million investment in quantum information research at the University of Illinois. Read More

Paul Kwiat’s LabEscape Featured in New York Times

Paul Kwiat’s LabEscape, a science-based escape room experience, is designed to make the wonder of science accessible to everyone. Read More

Paul Kwiat Named Inaugural Director of New Illinois Quantum Information Center

Paul Kwiat will serve as the inaugural director of the new Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology center (IQUIST), founded with a $15 mullion investment from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Read More

First Years Win Fellowships

We welcome first years Colin Lualdi and Dalton Chaffee to the group! Dalton was awarded the NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship in April 2017, which is awarded to graduate students “who show significant potential to contribute to NASA’s goal of creating innovative new space technologies.” Colin was awarded both an NSF GRFP fellowship and a College of Engineering SURGE Fellowship. Congratulations!

Quantum-memory-assisted multi-photon source

Post-doc Fumihiro Kaneda generates synchronized photons using quantum memories. Read more about this and measurement-device-independent QKD here.

Single photons and adaptive optics

Graduate student Alex Hill published work on optimization of single-mode collection on the single-photon level using a deformable mirror.

Student awarded NDSEG and NSF fellowships

First-year graduate student Joseph Chapman was awarded an NDSEG fellowship from the Department of Defense, and was also offered a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. Congratulations!

Physics-based escape room open in Urbana

Professor S. has gone missing. Four government agents have disappeared. Can you solve the mystery, save the free world, and maybe learn something too? The world’s first science-based escape room is now open in Urbana, IL, a physics outreach project developed by Professor Paul Kwiat with support from the American Physical Society and Physics Illinois.

Grad student Rebecca Holmes reports on single-photon vision research in Physics World

Full December 2016 issue available to subscribers. Read Rebecca Holmes’ article about seeing single photons here (no subscription needed):

Students win OSA Enabled by Optics contest with video about fingerprint sensors

Graduate students Courtney Krafczyk, Rebecca Holmes, Michelle Victora and JJ Wong, and undergraduate Sheldon Schlie were the winners of the OSA Enabled by Optics contest with their video about the optics of fingerprint sensors! The video explains total internal reflection and other optics concepts with cartoons and demonstrations.

Students awarded NDSEG, NSF, and Mavis Future Faculty Fellowships

Third-year graduate student Michelle Victora was selected as a 2016-2017 Mavis Future Faculty Fellow by the College of Engineering. First-year graduate student Kristina Meier was awarded an NDSEG fellowship from the Department of Defense, and was also offered a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. Congratulations!

Exploring the limits of quantum nonlocality

We used entangled photons to test quantum non-locality in ways that were previously beyond experimental reach, and achieved the “most nonlocal” correlations ever reported. Read more in the open-access paper: “Exploring the Limits of Quantum Nonlocality with Entangled Photons,” Bradley G. Christensen, Yeong-Cherng Liang, Nicolas Brunner, Nicolas Gisin, and Paul G. Kwiat in Physical Review X.

Squinting to see a single photon

Can you see a single photon? Quantum optics may help us find out. Read more: “Squinting to see a single photon” via APS News

Take a walk through a loophole-free Bell test

Congratulations to graduate students Brad Christensen and Michael Wayne, former undergraduate Daniel Kumor, and researchers from NIST and several other institutions, who have used entangled photons in a loophole-free Bell test. We also thank graduate student Kristina Meier and undergraduates Joseph Chapman and Malhar Jere. Take a walk through the experiment in this video, and read more:

How does an optical fingerprint sensor work?

Find out how optical fingerprint sensors use total internal reflection in this video by Kwiat group members. (And vote for us in the the OSA Enabled by Optics contest before November 17!)

Graduate student Rebecca Holmes is a winner of the Emil Wolf Outstanding Student Paper Competition at FiO 2015

Studying the visual system with single photons

Physics and psychology unite! We’re using quantum optics to find out whether humans can see a single photon (and maybe even its superposition). Read more:

Happy National Donut Day!

The mathematical properties of a donut (or torus) can be used to communicate quantum information more efficiently. Read more:

Superdense teleportation using hyperentangled photons

We demonstrated a superdense teleportation protocol for higher-fidelity transmission of quantum information with fewer experimental resources: “Superdense teleportation of quantum information,” Trent Graham et al. in Nature Communications. Read more on the Physics Illinois website.

Engineering photon pairs for quantum information

We demonstrated a source that produces pure heralded single photons and polarization-entangled pairs without unwanted spectral correlations. Former graduate student Kevin Zielnicki is the lead author: “Engineering of near-IR photon pairs to be factorable in space-time and entangled in polarization” in Optics Express.

Student featured by NSF for Women's History Month

Fourth-year graduate student and NSF Graduate Research Fellow Rebecca Holmes was featured in a social media series on women in science for Women’s History Month.

Student awarded NDSEG graduate fellowship

Second-year graduate student Alex Hill received a three-year National Defense Science & Engineering Graduate Fellowship from the Department of Defense.

Can you see a single photon?

Can you see a single photon? We’re seeking volunteers to help us find out. Read more about our single-photon vision research and fill out an interest form here.

Experiment closes the "detection loophole"

“Detection-Loophole-Free Test of Quantum Nonlocality, and Applications.” DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.130406. We used a source of entangled photons to violate a Bell inequality free of the “fair-sampling” assumption. This work was selected as an Editor’s Suggestion and was featured in Physics. Read more about tests of nonlocality on our Research page.

Students awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and Goldwater Scholarship

Second-year graduate student Courtney Byard received a 2013 Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. Rising senior undergraduate David Schmid received a 2013 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. Second-year graduate student Rebecca Holmes also received an NSF fellowship in 2012.