The university’s newest and most scientifically sophisticated building, the Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre, opened in September and promises to further solidify Waterloo’s growing reputation as the world’s “Quantum Valley.”
“This remarkable new building is unique in the world,” says University of Waterloo president & vice-chancellor Feridun Hamdullahpur. “It adds tremendous capacity to the University of Waterloo’s global impact in research and discovery as a state-of-the-art research facility where scientists from many disciplines will work together towards the next big breakthroughs in science and technology.”
Shared by the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) and the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN), the 285,000-square-foot facility is designed to give researchers the cutting-edge tools and collaborative opportunities they need to pioneer technologies unimaginable even a decade ago.
The research conducted at the Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre is expected to produce game-changing advances in quantum information science and nanotechnology. Scientists will pioneer technologies including ultra-powerful quantum computers, unbreakable cryptography, ultra-precise sensors and unique nano-scale materials small enough to travel through the bloodstream for medicine delivery. Researchers have only begun to imagine the possible applications for quantum information and nanotechnology.
“The new centre represents the next big milestone in the evolution of this research at the University of Waterloo,” says Raymond Laflamme, executive director of the Institute for Quantum Computing. “It’s incredibly exciting to think about the research and innovation that will happen here.”
Such innovation is possible thanks to the namesakes of the new building – Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis – whose forward-thinking philanthropy launched IQC a decade ago and has served as an example of how the private sector, governments and academia can build partnerships that will ultimately benefit everyone.
“Behind the building is the vision of Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis,” says Laflamme. “They understand the importance of fundamental science, and the value of applying that science to solve problems that are important to society.”
The building officially opened on September 21 with a ceremony attended by 1,200 guests, including representatives from the federal and provincial governments, the university and the research community. Over the following week, the building was showcased during a series of events, from scientific symposia to a public open house and a quantum-themed rock concert led by Jay Ingram, science populizer and longtime host of television’s Daily Planet.
Quantum: Music at the Frontier of Science – a mind-bending fusion of music and science created by IQC and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony – capped off the festivities. More than 5,000 guests toured the new building during the various grand opening events.
The building is designed to nurture collaboration among scientists in two great fields, producing discoveries that fuel the 21st century economy.
“I don’t really think there’s anywhere else in the world where two large institutes of increasing international renown are co-located in the same building, sharing the same facilities, the same tools and instruments that we have in this building,” says WIN executive director Arthur Carty. “It will be a tremendous powerhouse in terms of research and innovation.”
What’s more, the location of the building on the main campus allows scientists to deepen collaborations with affiliated departments at the university, such as applied mathematics, physics and astronomy, computer science, chemistry, electrical and computer engineering, and combinatorics and optimization.
“Quantum devices of the future will be built with nano materials, and will be enabled by nanotechnology,” Carty says. “So in a very real sense, nanotechnology will serve as a bridge to quantum technologies. In this building, people will meet with one another, they’ll share experiences, ideas, and approaches – and I think that’s where a lot of great science starts.”
The building took several years to design and construct because of stringent scientific standards. In the atomic and subatomic realm, even the slightest disturbance (a passing truck, for instance, or even water flowing through nearby pipes) can disrupt an experiment, so the facility has rigid controls for humidity, temperature, electromagnetic radiation and vibration.
The 6,700-square-foot cleanroom/fabrication facility, shared by IQC and WIN, sits on its own foundation, atop deeply embedded, shock-absorbing material. Even if the main building vibrates a little from the typical bustle around a university campus, the cleanroom won’t budge by more than a micrometre (a fraction of the width of a human hair).
The cleanroom itself is rated as a Class-1000 facility. A cubic foot of its air contains no more than 1,000 particles, as opposed to the one million to five million particles in typical outdoor air. Some parts of the facility are Class-100.
This pure environment is necessary for work inside the facility, such as lithography systems so precise they can pattern designs as small
as 20-billionths of a metre across. In other labs, the temperature never fluctuates more than a degree Celsius.
In parts of the building, water pipes rest on shock-absorbing springs, and labs have independent electrical systems that inhibit any electromagnetic interference. These rigid controls are necessary when exploring the world of quantum mechanics – a realm in which simply observing a particle changes its state.
Research at IQC aims to harness these unique properties of quantum mechanics to build unprecedented technologies, such as unbreakable cryptography, highly efficient sensors and computers that can solve problems considered impossible for present-day information processors.
Quantum systems are indeed highly delicate, but such sensitivity can be turned into an advantage, as is the case with quantum cryptography systems or sensors. And thanks to some phenomena unique to quantum mechanics – such as the “superposition” principle in which quantum objects can be in multiple states at once – quantum technologies will achieve powers and efficiencies far superior to their “classical” counterparts.
At WIN, scientists are developing devices on a scale of billionths of a metre – the scale at which the properties of materials can fundamentally change. These nanotechnologies promise important applications in medicine, materials design, electronics, instrumentation and more. Researchers need a place where they have the intellectual freedom, collaborative opportunities and inspiring surroundings to think differently.
Jonathan Baugh is one of the scientists whose work bridges both quantum information and nanotechnology research.
A faculty member at the Institute for Quantum Computing, Baugh’s experimental work aims to harness the “spin” properties of electrons to use as quantum bits (or “qubits”) for computation.
This is one of the most promising present-day avenues toward building full-scale quantum computers that are incredibly more powerful that even today’s best “classical” supercomputers. To achieve the delicate task of wrangling electrons with precision, Baugh builds nano-scale devices called “quantum dots,” which act like artificial atoms that can be “tuned” to behave in desired ways for computation.
The ultra-sophisticated research facilities in the new building enable researchers to conduct these types of experiments with greater-than-ever precision, Baugh says.
“Temperature control, humidity control, vibration control – these are certain things that experimentalists look for, and we have them at this building,” says Baugh. “We’ll be able to accomplish more on a quicker time-scale.”
Besides stringent technical specifications, the Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre was designed to meet ambitious architectural and aesthetic standards.
The chief scientists behind both IQC and WIN, along with Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis, helped create the vision for the centre. To bring that vision to reality, they teamed up with the renowned Toronto firm KPMB Architects, whose previous projects include the Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox, The National Ballet School of Canada and the Canadian Museum of Nature.
The very earliest design was literally scribbled on a scrap of paper by IQC’s Laflamme. He drew a circle, with one part labelled “labs” and another part labeled “offices.” Laflamme’s doodle was inspired by the Cénotaphe à Newton, a building conceived by a design by French neoclassical architect Étienne-Louis Boullée.
The idea, Laflamme told the architects, was to create a building in which all occupants are visible to one another from all angles. Although a truly circular design wasn’t feasible, the architects found an innovative way to bring Laflamme’s vision to reality.
They came up with a six-storey sunlit atrium in the centre of the IQC portion of the building, and a “floating” staircase (no pillars or other visible means of support) zig-zagging from the basement to the top floor.
Six-storey atrium with floating staircase provides a common, collaborative space for scientists of all disciplines.
“We created an interdisciplinary interaction space,” says chief architect Mitchell Hall. “Anybody, from any floor, needed to see anyone else. If you take people who can generally be somewhat introverted and spend a lot of time in their offices or labs, and you give them a space where they’re almost forced to interact, they’re going to bump into one another, have a cup of coffee and perhaps discuss ideas and see things from different perspectives.”
There is a convenient place to sketch out ideas and theorems at practically every turn.
“Whiteboards are everywhere,” says Hall. “We literally covered the walls in glass, so you can engage in discourse with your colleagues and draw on the walls to work through a problem.”
A versatile and highly convertible auditorium will be the venue for scientific conferences, public talks and other events. During the September grand opening events, the auditorium served as the venue for events as diverse as a policy symposium on information security and a full symphony concert. The space features retractable seating, and can be subdivided into combinations of smaller areas to accommodate a broad range of events.
Just as the inside of the facility is designed to best enable and inspire quantum science and nanotechnology, the outside conveys fundamental concepts of the research. The building consists of three distinct but interconnected sections – the IQC portion, the WIN portion and the shared cleanroom/fabrication facility.
IQC is housed in what the architects describe as a “bar” building– a six-storey structure with an east-west orientation and a glimmering façade of glass that represents the concept of quantum “superposition” through the degrees of transparency, translucency and reflection of light.
The WIN section has a distinctive “honeycomb exoskeleton” that evokes some of the strongest nano-scale structures of nature.
“Although the halves of the buildings work very well together, they’re very clear identities,” says Hall. “It is a really remarkable place.”
Canada has already established itself as a world-leading hub of quantum information and nanotechnology research, and the University of Waterloo’s newest facility will surely enhance that reputation.
Scientifically and aesthetically, the building will become a magnet that will draw many of the world’s top minds to Waterloo, further enhancing the university’s long-standing renown as an international hub of research and innovation.
“We can lead the world in these areas,” says Hamdullahpur. “And with this building, we have something you won’t find anywhere else.”
