Cal State East Bay opens pathways to careers in quantum technology

California is building the future of computing, and Cal State East Bay is helping ensure its students have a pathway to it.

A new $37.5 million National Science Foundation investment will help bring quantum science out of research labs and into undergraduate classrooms. As part of the UC Berkeley-led initiative, Cal State East Bay and CSU San Marcos will help develop programs that prepare CSU students to enter this rapidly growing field.

"One of the things I find most exciting about this partnership is that it brings CSU undergraduates directly into a field that has often been concentrated at major research universities and at the graduate level," said Cal State East Bay Physics Professor Derek Kimball. 

Cal State East Bay faculty are developing an undergraduate minor in Quantum Information Science and Technology, where students will learn quantum mechanics, program quantum computers and gain hands-on laboratory experience. The university hopes to launch the minor next academic year.

And they won't have to be physics majors.

"We want students in computer science, engineering, mathematics and other fields to be able to participate without having to complete years of advanced physics first," Kimball said. 

Cal State East Bay and CSU San Marcos will also help lead the institute's CSU partnership, developing and testing curriculum that can eventually be shared with campuses across the system.

"Quantum information science is a rapidly developing field, and companies, universities and national laboratories are building a new workforce around these technologies," said Jackson Kimball.  "We want CSU students to be part of that workforce from the beginning, not arriving after all the pathways have already been established."

Cal State East Bay and UC Berkeley also plan to develop a Quantum Information Science Summer Camp. Students and faculty will spend two to three weeks at Berkeley working with advanced quantum hardware and meeting leading researchers in the field.

"We're in the heart of the Bay Area's high-tech sector, with many quantum computing companies, both new start-ups and more established companies, so there will be fertile collaboration with industry to get our curriculum well aligned with what employers are looking for," said Jackson Kimball.

For Cal State East Bay, the opportunity gives students a chance to help shape where that technology goes next.