August 25, 2026 -- Dartmouth will be a member of a new research institute, announced by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), to accelerate the development of quantum computing. The institute, titled MARQUIS: Manufacturable and Resilient superconducting Quantum Information Systems, is one of eight initiatives in a $290 million round of funding in the NSF's Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes program.

Led by Princeton University, MARQUIS will devise techniques for fabricating hardware and develop education and workforce training programs that deepen US leadership in quantum science and engineering. The research institute will gather experts from wide-ranging fields to break a single, critical bottleneck—the manufacture of core components for quantum processors.

"I am honored and excited to work with this world-class team to reimagine the Josephson junction, perhaps the most important component in superconducting quantum hardware, from a materials-first perspective," said Dartmouth Engineering Assistant Professor Mattias Fitzpatrick who will participate in the institute together with James Whitfield, an associate professor of physics at Dartmouth. "My team at Dartmouth will help measure tiny material defects, known as two-level-system defects, in these circuits to help the team develop new materials and fabrication techniques to unlock next-generation superconducting quantum hardware."

To build quantum computers at a scientifically useful scale, the most basic elements must be reinvented, said Nathalie de Leon, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Princeton and co-director of the Princeton Quantum Initiative, who will direct the new institute. "The whole community has been using essentially the same materials technology for about a quarter century," she said.

MARQUIS will receive $27.9 million in NSF funding over five years, according to the agency, with Dartmouth specifically receiving over $2 million. The research team harnesses expertise from three broad disciplines—materials science, quantum devices, and semiconductor processing—spanning two dozen laboratories across nine research institutions.

Along with Princeton and Dartmouth, participating institutions include Cornell, MIT, UCSB, Stanford, NY Creates, Michigan State, and the University of Iowa. The organizations represented on the advisory board include Google Quantum AI, NVIDIA, Applied Materials, Oxford Instruments, Bluefors, KU Leuven/Imec and MIT Lincoln Laboratory. 

In addition to reinventing the materials systems, the MARQUIS team will also develop methods to validate and compare the performance of various designs and to test them in mid-scale quantum processors—a step between the small systems typically developed in academic labs and the large processors that will one day run useful quantum algorithms. 

These test beds will help standardize research efforts across disparate labs and allow experts from other fields to contribute meaningfully to the core challenge, according to MARQUIS' leaders. For example, semiconductor fabrication techniques that could prove valuable for quantum computing often involve highly specialized expertise that quantum researchers don't have. 

Fitzpatrick recently received a CAREER award through NSF's Division of Materials Research supporting his work to "advance the understanding of atomic-scale defects that limit the performance of next-generation materials in quantum electronics," according to the project summary. The award recognizes the high potential of his group's unique spectroscopy technique developed at Dartmouth to study materials important for quantum computing.

"We can see that the materials limitations are going to be one of the next big bottlenecks," de Leon said. A large research institute creates mechanisms to coordinate the activities of lots of different people, she said. Her idea: Gather that firepower and aim it at one of the oldest obstacles in quantum computing.

"Let's make a dream team," de Leon said, "to try to unblock this."