���Ҵ�ý�ƽ������

JILA and NIST Fellow, along with University of Colorado Professor Konrad Lehnert will be leading a project through the Department of Defense (DoD) competitive Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) Program. ���Ҵ�ý�ƽ������ was matched only by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in receiving three MURI awards.

JILA Fellow and University of Colorado physics professor Heather Lewandowski helped lead a group of more than 1,000 undergraduate students in a study looking at the temperatures of the Sun's corona. The corona, the outer layer, gets incredibly hot, and the study hoped to figure out why. Their research was featured in Popular Science Magazine, revealing the creativity and ingenuity of undergraduate students in scientific research.

JILA and NIST Fellows David Nesbitt's and Jun Ye's recent results in their breathalyzer study have been highlighted in a new article in Scientific American. Using frequency combs, a particular type of laser array, scientists could detect specific molecules in the breath, including diseases like COVID-19. This research suggests huge implications for the future of disease diagnosis and prevention.

Heidi Shyu, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering at the U.S. Department of Defense, visited JILA and the University of Colorado Boulder on Monday to glimpse the future of cutting-edge research.

From the university’s proximity to national laboratories and quantum-intensive companies to the high volume of pioneering alumni, ���Ҵ�ý�ƽ������ has long been a leader in the quantum space. This legacy has led to a push in innovation and technology, including as it pertains to national security—a goal also shared by Shyu and the Department of Defense.

JILA and NIST Fellows Jun Ye and David Nesbitt, along with their respective teams, have recently been highlighted in the latest issue of the SPIE Photonics West Show Daily, a publication from SPIE. This highlight focuses on the recent advancements in the frequency comb breathalyzer apparatus that the researchers have built and tested, which looks at diagnosing COVID-19 and other diseases.

JILA researchers have upgraded a breathalyzer based on Nobel Prize-winning frequency-comb technology and combined it with machine learning to detect SARS-CoV-2 infection in 170 volunteer subjects with excellent accuracy. Their achievement represents the first real-world test of the technology’s capability to diagnose disease in exhaled human breath.

Every year the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Department of Commerce (DOC) grant honor awards in the form of Gold, Silver, and Bronze Medals. According to the DOC website: “the Gold and Silver Medals are the highest and second highest honor granted by the Secretary for distinguished and exceptional performance.” Two of JILA’s Fellows, Jun Ye, and Judah Levine, have been awarded these medals.

JILA (a world-leading physics research institute set up by NIST and the University of Colorado Boulder) is part of a multi-university research group that will build quantum-based tools for space-based Earth sensing. NASA expects to award a $15 million grant for five years to the group of universities. This cohort includes researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, JILA, the University of Colorado Boulder (CU), the University of California Santa Barbara (USCB), the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). “The award establishes the Quantum Pathways Institute, supported by a NASA STRI (Space Technology Research Institute), led by Prof. Srinivas Bettadpur of the University of Texas at Austin, Texas, with CU and UCSB as collaborating institutions,” explained Dana Anderson, a JILA Fellow and ���Ҵ�ý�ƽ������ professor who is involved in the project. The Quantum Pathways Institute is the first of its kind, as it strives to translate the capabilities of quantum physics into usable devices called “Quantum 2.0.” Besides these developments, the Institute will offer educational training for graduate students and postdocs in quantum theory and quantum experimentation.

The CUbit Quantum Initiative at the University of Colorado Boulder has appointed physics professor Noah Finkelstein to serve as faculty director of education and workforce. Finkelstein will lead CUbit’s establishment of a coordinated educational approach that cultivates leaders of the next-generation quantum workforce.

JILA and NIST Fellow Ana Maria Rey collaborated with NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) Ion Storage Group leader John Bollinger, and researchers at the University of Innsbruck, Rutgers University and the University of Colorado Boulder, to design a trapped-ion simulator for 2D p-wave superconductors. Their work paves a way for clean observations of the predicted non-equilibrium dynamics in future experiments using the trapped-ion simulator, or Penning trap.