Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday the state is investing $300 million to create a new Quantum Research and Innovation Hub at Stony Brook University, which she said would help make the university “a global powerhouse…. recognized globally as the place where the smartest people want to be and the smartest students want to be educated.”
“We’re investing big time today,” Hochul said, speaking at the university’s Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology, or CEWIT.
The expenditure will allow the university to attract top-notch researchers and students, launch new start-up companies, create jobs and help establish Long Island as a major center for quantum computing, university officials said. The technology has been called a new kind of internet, with vastly more power, data security and speed than the current version. It is expected to transform the way technology is used in national security, finance, health care and other fields.
Andrea Goldsmith, the university’s president, called the funding “a truly extraordinary investment in our university that will transform science and technology in the United States and around the world.”
At the news conference, Goldsmith compared the technology’s current form to the state of cellular communication in the 1980s, when she said today’s smart phones would have seemed “magical.”
She said, “We have created that magic here at Stony Brook by building the largest quantum network in the country.”
Luca Rallis, a student trustee at Stony Brook, said at the news conference, “It is days like today that make us proud to be in New York state and make me proud to be a Stony Brook student.”
Such investments, he said, “are critical to expand economic opportunity in our nation and our state…. I can’t wait to hear about the cutting edge work that you all will lead.”
Stony Brook’s quantum computing network now stretches roughly 170 miles between Stony Brook, the Brooklyn Navy Yard and upstate New York, Goldsmith said in an interview before the announcement. The world’s largest network is in China, she said.
Check back for updates on this developing story.
Maura McDermott covers education. Since joining Newsday in 2012, she also has worked on the investigations team and covered real estate and the business of health care.