Fifteen teams have been awarded a total of nearly $750,000 in funding in the second year of the President’s Research Excellence (PRE) Accelerator Grant program. Each grant of up to $50,000 is designated for small teams formed to pursue curiosity-driven, novel, high-risk and high-reward research.

Administered through the Office of Knowledge Enterprise, the program provides seed support for cross- and interdisciplinary research projects that have the potential to attract external funding and supports the university’s goal to  grow its research and innovation enterprise by attracting more externally sponsored research funding, enabling curiosity-driven research and discoveries, and addressing large, complex societal challenges. 

Prof. Jay Gupta is the PI on one of the the awards for Developing the ‘van der Waals’ vacuum as a host for quantum bits. Co-Investigators are David McComb and Shamsul Arafin of the College of Engineering.  Description: There is a broad search for new hosts that protect quantum bits from electromagnetic noise and can be incorporated into devices. This project proposes a novel approach based on rare gas solids that may offer the best possible protection, in a 2D materials platform that also allows device nanofabrication.