Rajibul Islam, assistant professor at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) and the Department of Physics and Astronomy, is one of the University of Waterloo researchers receiving an Early Researcher Award, the Ontario government announced.
Islam leads the Laboratory for Quantum Information with Trapped Ions where he is developing trapped ion quantum information processors for trap and control Ytterbium ions. By tweaking the states of these particles, his team will be able to uncover the fundamental science necessary to simulate quantum many-particle systems.
The Ontario Early Researcher Awards help new researchers working at publicly funded Ontario research institutions to build a research team. Each researcher receives $140,000 over five years as well as an additional $50,000 from the University.
“Training people in quantum research and technologies is important because the field is so new,” said Islam. “This award will bring in graduate students who are trained as the quantum workforce of the future. They will help build these quantum simulators, and learn a new, unique set of research and technical skills.”
Previous winners of the Early Researcher Award at IQC include: Wei Tsen, Michal Bajcsy, Guo-Xing Miao, Na Young Kim, Michael Reimer, Kyung Choi, Jonathan Baugh, Andrew Childs, Joseph Emerson, Thomas Jennewein, Adrian Lupascu, Matteo Mariantoni, Michele Mosca, Ashwin Nayak and Kevin Resch.