Quantum computing is key to conducting powerful computations with fewer resources. And that could accelerate breakthroughs in AI, cryptography, financial fraud detection, and energy research.  

At Northeastern’s Institute for NanoSystems Innovation on the Oakland campus, Assistant Professor Aravind Nagulu and Oakland graduate students are advancing this work, designing and fabricating the semiconductors that are foundational to qubits (the chips that store and process data). While traditional chips are made from silicon, qubits are made from trapped ions, photons, or atoms. “They are feeble,” says Nagulu, and highly sensitive to noise.  

That noise grows louder as temperatures go up. Therefore, colder conditions improve qubit superconductivity. Achieving these low temperatures requires a dilution refrigerator. The challenge, Nagulu said, is to cool the rest of the process too, ultimately making the design of transistors cheaper, more efficient, and quieter.  

Nagulu recently received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to investigate scaling quantum computers. 

“If we can create compact and cost-effective superconducting circulators, quantum computers could scale to larger numbers of qubits without requiring larger refrigerator space,” says the assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. 

As the field expands, demand for skilled engineers will also grow. In response, Nagulu plans to develop an interdisciplinary undergraduate course for our Oakland students that integrates circuit design and quantum systems.