Our Mission

Researchers working at YQI North

Founded in 2014 and spanning 31 research groups, the Yale Quantum Institute was founded to enhance Yale’s leadership in the field of quantum science and technology. It serves as a forum to bring together experimental and theoretical researchers and students at Yale, in the field of quantum information physics, quantum control, quantum measurement, and quantum many-body physics. 

Yale Quantum Institute serves as a forum to bring together experimental and theoretical researchers and students in the field of Quantum information Science on campus. In addition to research, the Institute runs an active visitors program to bring in quantum information scientists from leading institutions worldwide, hosts conferences and workshops in sub-fields relating to its core mission. 

YQI also offers an active quantum science outreach program, including an Artist-in-Residence program running since 2017, to make quantum science accessible to all through art and the humanities.

  • 1998

    Robert Schoelkopf appointed to Yale Faculty in Applied Physics and is awarded two years later the Packard Foundation Fellowship to develop new types of high frequency superconducting electronics for controlling quantum circuits.

  • 2002

    Distinguished faculty members Michel Devoret and Steve Girvin are recruited at Yale, bringing further expertise in the quantum behavior of electronic circuits with superconducting elements. The first long-lived superconducting quantum bits (qubits) are demonstrated.

  • 2005

    Dave DeMille and his research group develop a technique to produce ultracold polar molecules and propose to use them as qubits for quantum computation. 

  • 2009

    The Devoret, Girvin and Schoelkopf groups invent a new superconducting qubit, the method to read it out efficiently, and the quantum “bus” that entangles two of them, leading to the realization of the first solid-state quantum processor running an algorithm. 

  • 2014

    Hong Tang and Liang Jiang’s research groups develop a chip-scale device that uses the wave-particle duality of single photons to sense the presence of an object without interacting with it, useful in spectroscopic studies of photosensitive materials.

  • 2015

    Official launch of the Yale Quantum Institute by President Peter Salovey in newly renovated conference and offices in 17 Hillhouse Ave.

  • 2016

    YQI researchers explore new paradigm for quantum computing based on “Schrodinger Cat” states of light (photons). They are first to demonstrate effective error correction with such photon qubits, a critical step towards computation with logical qubits.

  • 2019

    YQI researchers and artist-in-residence Spencer Topel use Yale quantum computers prototypes to make music based on quantum signals. This is the first real application of quantum computers!

     

  • 2023

    Qubit lifetime Improvement by 2.7 times thanks to real-time Quantum Error Correction

  • 2024

    The Yale Quantum Institute turns 10 year old. Yale leaders and state and local officials commemorate the groundbreaking of the new Physical Sciences and Engineering Building, future home of YQI

  • 2025

    A 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Yale Professor Emeritus of Applied Physics Michel H. Devoret “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit.”

The past two decades have seen breakthroughs in both the theory and the practice of quantum science. The properties of superposition and entanglement, once thought of as paradoxical and counterintuitive, are now understood instead as unique resources. At the same time, progress in the laboratory now allows unprecedented control over individual quantum objects, whether they are naturally-occurring microscopic systems like atoms, or macroscopic, man-made systems whose properties are engineered.

These advances may soon enable us to perform otherwise intractable computations, ensure privacy in communications, better understand and design novel states of matter and develop new types of sensors and measurement devices. Today, a new discipline is emerging which combines physics, electrical engineering, mathematics, and computer science to further the basic understanding of the quantum world, and to develop novel information processing devices and other quantum-enabled measurement and sensing technologies.

We would like to acknowledge the W.M. Keck Foundation for their support in 2003 which helped launch the leadership of the Yale Quantum Institute