The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded Casimir researchers Simon Gröblacher (Quantum Nanoscience Department, Delft University of Technology) and Stephanie Wehner (QuTech, Delft) a Vici grant of up to 1.5 million euros. This will enable the laureates to develop an innovative line of research and further expand their own research group for a period of five years. Vici is one of the largest personal scientific grants in the Netherlands and is aimed at advanced researchers.

Controlling mechanical motion through individual spins
Prof. dr S. Gröblacher
Does quantum mechanics we know from the nanoscale still work with macroscopic objects? Creating quantum states of large mechanical systems can answer this intriguing question, but the larger the system, the more difficult it becomes to do so. As a new approach, researchers will directly couple a quantum system, in this case the spin of a single erbium ion, to the motion of a mechanical oscillator, in order to create complex quantum states at macroscopic scales. This will open up a path to full quantum control of mechanical motion and to testing quantum theory like never before.

"I am very humbled and excited to receive the prestigious NWO Vici grant. It will allow my group to set up a new research direction where we will use a two-level quantum system to create complex quantum states of mechanical oscillators." - Simon Gröblacher

Towards a universally programmable Quantum Internet
Prof. dr. S. Wehner
The vision of a Quantum Internet is to enable radically new Internet applications by bringing fundamental elements of quantum mechanics—entanglement—to Internet users around the world. Amongst many other new applications, such entanglement makes it impossible to eavesdrop on communication. Unfortunately, we currently lack the knowledge to program and control these new types of networks. The gap between hardware and usable software applications must be closed first. This project will develop the first architecture that can make the Quantum Internet programmable so that anyone can develop useful software applications in the future.

“I am very excited about receiving the Vici grant, which will allow my group and me to lay the foundations for quantum network architectures. This will make large-scale quantum networks of the future available to end-users, by making them programmable in high-level software. We also hope to enlarge the quantum computer science community working on quantum networking, by developing an initial theory of performance analysis for quantum networks.” - Stephanie Wehner