As the World Recognizes Quantum Science, Stevens Contributes Key Research

In 2024, the United Nations voted to proclaim 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology to mark 100 years of quantum mechanics research while also raising public awareness around the important and growing role quantum technologies will play in security, imaging, computing and other challenges worldwide.

Stevens is exceptionally well-positioned for this historical moment, having offered quantum innovation and research for decades.

The current hub of this activity is the university’s multi-disciplinary Center for Quantum Science and Engineering (CQSE), which works to develop technologies and applications in quantum computing, communication, security, optics, imaging and metrology.

Leading Innovation: QCSE Director Yuping Huang

As founding director of QCSE, professor Yuping Huang wears a number of hats. Photonics innovator. Security researcher. Business school and engineering school dual professor. And, most recently, chief quantum scientist for the NASDAQ-listed quantum-hardware firm QCI.

But the hat that probably fits him best? Visionary.

Huang, who joined Stevens in 2014, says his mission is to place quantum technologies and devices in the hands of everyone. Currently, state-of-the-art quantum computers must be cooled to very low temperature to operate properly. Huang’s teams work to develop chips and optics that could operate at practical temperatures, paving the way for future generations of quantum personal computers.

With teams of his students and advisees, Huang also investigates quantum communications and security. In 2018 his team built and demonstrated a pathbreaking local quantum-communication network on the Stevens campus as a proof of concept.

Huang and his students have also developed new quantum methods of generating random numbers, which are critical to security and patented a quantum-based security system that uses special techniques creating theoretically unbreakable privacy — work recognized in 2023 by the Research & Development Council of New Jersey with a prestigious intellectual-property award.

“How do you prove you are you without giving up sensitive information?” asks Huang. “[Quantum technology] will allow you to do that.”

More recently, Huang has turned his attention to potential applications of single photon-based technologies, including experimental new ways of imaging objects very accurately and of measuring and calibrating very small distances and surfaces — an essential need in manufacturing, medical imaging and other fields — using quantum superposition principles and properties.

These quantum-powered methods enable AI to possess a “sense of touch” and fine measurement for the first time.

Of Space, Time and Gravity: Pathbreaking Theorist Igor Pikovski

Physicist Igor Pikovski, who joined Stevens in 2018, isn’t afraid to think big. Really big. His theoretical work takes in Einstein’s theories, space, time, space-time, even fundamental forces such as gravity.

His 2024 paper on quantum gravity in Nature Communications, in fact, was the most-downloaded physics paper of the year. That paper proposed a bold experiment that may become possible in the very near future, a method of confirming the existing of gravity particles (gravitons) using specialized measuring devices and techniques working in collaboration with existing gravity-wave detection facilities.

Other recent work of Pikovski’s, with collaborators including Harvard University, proposes new methods to measure the effects of space-time on quantum effects by using networks of specially arrayed “quantum clocks” and help us better understand the still-shrouded interplay between quantum mechanics and gravity.

That’s important, because space-time is distorted in the presence of large objects such as planets; the quantum techniques and effects utilized when building applications here on Earth may be influenced by these factors.

Pikovski also collaborates with NASA on additional explorations of the intersection of general relativity and quantum physics.

Bold Optics, Helpful Photons: Nanopower Developer Stefan Strauf

Physicist Stefan Strauf joined Stevens in 2006 and quickly began to think outside the box just as quantum science was emerging as a major research field.

His focus? Power. Quantum systems need it, and the most convenient sources are photons — the power-packed particles that make up light. Strauf develops advanced and scalable methods of creating, brightening and directing light on computing chips that could one day power key societal applications such as quantum cryptography and quantum telecommunications.

One important method he developed and continues to refine enables chips to emit their own single photons by stretching ultra-thin doubled layers of tungsten diselenide around gold nanocubes positioned slightly above a gold nanomirror — an impressive technical feat. Interactions with the crystal at the borders of the cube produce photons in impressive numbers, channeling them into the gap between the cube and the mirror plate.

How impressive? Strauf’s method could amp up photon production by up to a factor of 50.

Putting Duality to Work: Entanglement Expert Qiaofeng Qian

Photons and electrons in our universe exhibit a strange duality: they can function as either waves or particles, depending how and where you’re looking. Nobody knows why, but this fact is foundational to the entire field of quantum mechanics. And — until now — nobody could explain how some objects could behave increasingly like particles and waves at the same time, which should not be theoretically possible because an increase in one should reflect a corresponding decrease in the other.

Enter Stevens physicist Qiaofeng Qian, who developed a startling new method for quantifying the “wave-ness” and the “particle-ness” of a given quantum object with his graduate student Pawan Khatiwada.

To do it, the duo introduced the concept of coherence, a measure of how particles, waves and systems are changing or might change at any given moment. When they added this concept in to typical computations of wave-ness or particle-ness, the sum of all possible states became exactly what it should have theoretically predicted to have been.

This breakthrough is important, Feng says, because quantum-imaging systems on the horizon will need highly reliable measures of quantum states in order to calculate the shapes of objects they are scanning with very close accuracy.

Short Pulses, Big Impacts: Laser Researcher Svetlana Malinovskaya

So-called quantum control techniques use special electromagnetic pulses that manipulate molecules, vibrating them in useful ways and unlocking new powers of perception. Stevens professor Svetlana Malinovskaya has long worked to precisely design ultrafast sequences of pulsed laser radiation, then control those sequence’s interactions with matter using qubits (special tiny quantum units of information).

In one quantum-sensing project, a collaboration with the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) and the Office of Naval Research, Malinovskaya developed a new theoretical model that could one day lead to a portable device that detects poisonous or hazardous contaminants in the air from safe distances.

By using timed, low-intensity laser pulses to temporarily excite molecules in the air, then reflect them back to a source device, her proposed system produces a coherent signal that can be used to identify the chemical signatures of airborne substances in real time. The project has applications for homeland security as well as public safety — for example, detecting gas or chemical leaks before they are evident.

The Power of Graduate-Student & Postdoctoral Talent

Stevens master’s and doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers are key contributors to all the university’s quantum efforts. Just a few examples:

• Lac Ngyuen Ph.D. ‘23 studied at Stevens’ CQSE under Huang’s mentorship before graduating and joining a private firm. With Huang, she was the co-awardee of an 2023 Edison Patent Award for her work on patented quantum-security methods. The award-winning technology contains quantum cryptographic and authentication protocols and processes, describing a method of generating pairs of entangled photons that share certain properties, measurement results and security checks with each other without sharing private data.

• Yong Meng Sua served as a key postdoctoral researcher in the CQSE under Huang’s guidance before subsequently becoming a Stevens faculty member. His current research includes single-photon LIDAR-based imaging, photon-on-chip methods and specialized photon counting and detection techniques, with applications including room-temperature computing.

• Cynthia Osuala, a current doctoral candidate in quantum physics, works on a number of projects including a collaboration with award-winning Stevens nanotech researcher EH Yang to fabricate nanoscale graphene interferometers — devices that can measure weak magnetic fields with quantum-enhanced sensing capabilities. Osuala has also collaborated with research partners from DEVCOM (the U.S Army’s primary research laboratory) and Spain’s Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, among others.

To learn more about Stevens’ quantum research, visit our quantum research hub and our quantum science center.