Officials are calling Stony Brook University’s new $300M Quantum Computing Center Long Island’s next moonshot.
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After Long Island played a major role in the Moon landing so many decades ago, officials here touted a new state investment in Stony Brook University research as potentially putting it at the early stages of a second scientific leap that could be the next moonshot.
Stony Brook University and New York State took a very literal quantum leap forward Sept. 17 as Gov. Kathy Hochul announced $300 million to establish a center on campus focusing on research and development of high-speed computing and communications. Hochul and a wide range of officials said funds would be used to establish the Quantum Research and Innovation Hub at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
“We know that to provide our state and nation with a brighter future, we need to invest today,” Hochul said. “And that is what New York is committed to do.”
The governor, who took the stage as Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” played, said she hoped this would help “cement SUNY’s role as a global powerhouse” where the “moon shot is to be recognized globally.”
As Hochul addressed a “room full of true believers,” she also credited Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine, Suffolk County Legislator Steven Englebright, SUNY Chancellor John King Jr. as well as Stony Brook leadership and researchers for steady advocacy.
Officials described the technology that lets quantum computers process information differently than conventional technology in ways that could help develop medications and otherwise improve operations.
“People will come back and look at this as a time when state government partners with academic institutions, but also private sector organizations” to advance technology, Hochul said. “The ideas that are incubated here are commercialized and create new jobs here in New York State and Long Island. That’s my vision of how these investments will benefit the people here and of our great state.”
Just six weeks after taking the helm, Stony Brook University President Andrea Goldsmith touted this “major scientific investment” as an “extraordinary” step as part of a shift that could “transform science and technology in the United States and around the world.”
She called quantum a “foundational technology” that could transform information science, semi-conductors, AI, energy efficiency, fintech, and mathematics.
Goldsmith also called the investment a “bold affirmation of the power of collaboration with the state of New York and SUNY.”
“We are at the dawn of the quantum information age,” she said, comparing it to the introduction of cell phones. “Today, sending quantum information anywhere in the world seems magical. Yet we have created that magic here at Stony Brook.”
Governor Kathy Hochul announced funding the $300 million quantum computing center at Stony Brook University on Sept. 17.Courtesy the Governor’s office
Goldsmith said the school’s researchers already built the largest quantum network in the country at Stony Brook, while noting that “great research requires great partnership.”
SUNY Chancellor John King Jr. said this investment came “at a time when the federal government and, sadly, much of the nation, are turning their backs on groundbreaking research.”
The program, he said, would leverage Stony Brook’s existing strengths, successes and resources, developing computing potentially at “orders of magnitude faster than anything we’ve seen before” to make “next generation computers, Internet, economic and information security.”
SUNY Board Trustee Cary Staller said this “historic announcement” would support work of “superb researchers” at Stonybrook.
“Today is a signal that we’re meeting ambitious goals, placing us at the forefront of groundbreaking research and development of next-generation technologies,” Staller continued.
Stony Brook said it would take roughly three years to build a 150,000-square-foot facility, expected to open in 2029, to house the SUNY Stony Brook Quantum Institute.
The school said it would house New York State’s first “hybrid Quantum Data Center at a university” and the SUNY Stony Brook Quantum Education Consortium.
Stony Brook officials said this would bring together “research, computing, and workforce training to solve society’s most complex challenges and build a faster, smarter, and more secure internet.”
Hochul said the SUNY system is going through a kind of golden age, attracting more applications and interest from researchers and professors.
“The momentum we’re experiencing here is nothing short of extraordinary,” Hochul said. “We’re not done. We are not resting on our laurels. We never say, ‘Mission accomplished’ for anything.”
In a day that was filled with superlatives that would prove either prescient or hyperbole, Staller looked back at the past and to the future at once.
“When I was a kid growing up on Long Island, aerospace powered the economy. We all took great pride that the lunar landing module was designed and built right here on Long Island,” he said in a moment that those in the room clearly hoped would be part of a bigger success. “We are planting the seeds for the next industry that will power Long Island for generations to come and change our world.”
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