A team led by Stony Brook University has received a $4 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support the development of a 10-node quantum network, known as SCY-QNet. This project is part of the NSF’s National Quantum Virtual Laboratory (NQVL) Quantum Testbeds initiative.
The SCY-QNet network will connect atomic quantum processing units at Stony Brook, Columbia University, Yale University, and Brookhaven National Laboratory. The award is part of Phase II of the NQVL program and follows an earlier pilot phase in which the team demonstrated key capabilities required for advancement.
Selection for this funding required success in the pilot phase and a detailed proposal process that included interviews with experts in Quantum Information Science and Technology (QIST) and NSF program managers.
“This award puts Stony Brook and our collaborators solidly in a national leadership position for quantum networking and communication,” said Kevin Gardner, Vice President for Research and Innovation at Stony Brook. “Our goal continues to be that Long Island and New York will be the birthplace of the new, secure quantum internet and the team of scientists and engineers that are responsible for the success of Phase 1 are second to none and deserve our recognition, praise, and continued support.”
Professor Eden Figueroa, lead principal investigator on the project as well as Stony Brook Presidential Innovation Endowed Professor and director of the Center for Distributed Quantum Processing, acknowledged efforts during earlier stages: “I would like to kindly thank the team of investigators and students in all our partner institutions that have been working really hard during the pilot phase of the project. Thanks to their efforts we were able to demonstrate simultaneous entanglement distribution across Long Island, from Brooklyn to Stony Brook and from Stony Brook to Commack via Brookhaven National Laboratory, and to set the path to quantum connect to Columbia and Yale. These experiments were the basis of our successful application for the Design Phase of the NQVL project.”
Figueroa also noted community engagement: “With partners like SUNY, The Ohio State University, the Chicago Quantum Exchange, the Great Plains Network, NIST, NASA, IBM, Cisco, and JP Morgan Chase, we are now preparing a large collaboration that will start designing the future quantum internet of the US and its new applications.”
Nina Maung-Gaona, senior associate vice president for research and innovation at Stony Brook University commented on broader impacts: “These quantum education and training initiatives are doing more than just building the future quantum workforce. They’re cultivating an innovation ecosystem right here in the greater NY area — one that will catalyze a new era of scientific discovery and economic leadership.”
In this next design phase supported by NSF funding over two years totaling $4 million—SCY-QNet will work with companies such as Toptica, Single Quantum, Aliro, and Qunnect. The aim is to improve both capacity and capability in quantum network devices.
The current plans include evolving SCY-QNet into an advanced system supporting privacy-preserving long-distance communication using entanglement. This infrastructure is expected to facilitate experiments like secret-key sharing protocols for secure communications between power generation systems across Long Island. The team also envisions teleportation-based communication systems utilizing remote matter-matter entanglement with time-synchronized classical networks—potentially benefiting sectors such as health care or finance—and developing networks using atomic-based clocks for precise timing applications.
Three main scientific challenges guide this phase: establishing banks of heralded quantum memories across Long Island/New York City; developing robust repeater systems so entanglement can travel more than 350 kilometers through fiber networks; creating atom-based qubit processing units at Columbia University, Stony Brook University, and Brookhaven National Laboratory.
SCY-QNet’s infrastructure includes a classical network backbone orchestrating device collaboration necessary for conducting experimental work safely while enabling resource sharing among multiple users nationwide or internationally.
Education remains central: SCY-QNet’s curriculum development spans high school through graduate levels via partnerships with many SUNY campuses while providing pathways toward increased STEM workforce literacy about quantum technologies. Plans also call for growing a collaborative ecosystem around research training within Greater New York.
