UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering Prof. Andrew Cleland has been named a 2024 Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellow, the U.S. Department of Defense’s flagship single-investigator award for basic research.
Each of the 11 tenured faculty members named as fellows will receive $3 million over five years to pursue ambitious, innovative, and groundbreaking “blue sky” research.
“Blue-sky research is intrinsically highly risky, but with risk comes the opportunity for great rewards,” said Cleland, the John A. MacLean Sr. Professor of Molecular Engineering Innovation and Enterprise. “Having funding opportunities targeting blue-sky research opens the window for big future wins.”
Cleland said he will use the fellowship money to support research at PME’s Cleland Lab in an “area of quantum information that has received very little attention to date,” using mechanical vibrations known as phonons to build fast, powerful, game-changing quantum computers.
“Mechanical vibrations offer a unique opportunity for quantum computing with potentially much higher reliability and a much smaller footprint than other approaches,” he said. “This would create a quantum computing format that has long been theoretically envisioned but for which no suitable platform has been found.”
Phonon-based quantum computing, Cleland said, promises a potentially faster route to quantum computing with easier requirements than other hardware platforms, with direct impacts in computing, simulation, and information security.
Named for Dr. Vannevar Bush, director of the DoD’s Office of Scientific Research and Development after World War II, the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (VBFF) nurtures high-risk and innovative ideas that push scientists toward breakthrough discoveries.
“Through this fellowship, DoD empowers some of the nation's most talented researchers to pursue ambitious ideas that defy conventional boundaries,” said Dr. Bindu Nair, director of the Basic Research Office in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. “The outcomes of VBFF-funded research have transformed entire disciplines, birthed novel fields, and challenged established theories and perspectives.”
The UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering is organized in interdisciplinary research themes, working collaboratively to solve some of humanity’s biggest challenges – including water scarcity, information security, healthcare, sustainable energy, and more.