Hey Quantum, you’re home 

Quantum science at Harvard is finally home. 

The interdisciplinary consortium of researchers comprising the Harvard Quantum Initiative has settled into a space of its own, completed this summer, at 60 Oxford St. in Cambridge. 

The David E. and Stacey L. Goel Quantum Science and Engineering Building is a top-to-bottom, 70,000-square-foot renovation of a former University data center built in 2004, in the heart of Harvard’s science campus. It houses researchers across many disciplines, including the Rowland Institute at Harvard and the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, in addition to HQI’s scientists working at the forefront of quantum engineering, networking, and theory.

The building features faculty and student offices; meeting spaces; state-of-the-art, low-vibration laboratories; places for impromptu discussions; a “quantum shop” with engineering resources for researchers; and a teaching lab.

“The extraordinary possibilities of serendipitous ideas that occur through contact and proximity can elevate innovation in major ways,” said HQI Co-Director Evelyn Hu, the Tarr-Coyne Professor of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering. The Goel Building, she said, will be “a field of dreams” for the community of researchers.

The Rowland Insitute, a fellowship program for early career scientists taking creative risks in their research, has moved its physical scientists into the Goel Building after residing near Kendall Square since 2002, when the institute founded by Edwin H. Land first merged with Harvard. While chemists and engineers, some of whom work on quantum materials, will occupy the building’s second floor, Rowland’s biologists will work in the neighboring Northwest Building. Shared meeting and social spaces are expected to give rise to greater interaction between HQI and Rowland scholars. 

“I think we wanted to create ways of changing the dynamic of how people work together,” said Christopher Stubbs, former dean of science in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He said planners envisioned less of a traditional academic building and more of an idea-friendly project space.

“We wanted to create ways of changing the dynamic of how people work together.”

 Christopher Stubbs

The University thrives by “changing and adapting,” agreed John Doyle, HQI co-director and the Henry B. Silsbee Professor of Physics. 

“The Goel Building was designed with different social and meeting spaces than typical. We even developed different, dynamic methods for assigning research space to make optimal use of one of our most precious resources at Harvard: square footage,” Doyle said. 

Planning for the space began in earnest around 2020, but the need for a quantum science and research hub was recognized long before that. What would eventually become the Harvard Quantum Initiative had begun coalescing around 2004 as a committed group of researchers studying quantum optics and related areas. HQI was officially established in 2018. 

“It was clear at the time that we needed a home, both for high-quality labs, but also a community,” said Mikhail Lukin, HQI co-director and the Joshua and Beth Friedman University Professor in the Department of Physics. 

One of the first to move in was Giulia Semeghini, assistant professor in applied physics, who joined the SEAS faculty in 2023 after completing postdoctoral research at Harvard. 

An experimentalist who is designing quantum computers using ytterbium and rubidium atoms, Semeghini leads experiments that require precise control of temperature, humidity, and vibration, all of which were major considerations for the building. 

As Semeghini’s team aims to build a stable quantum computing platform, she recognizes the importance of connection to other fields beyond atomic physics. 

“HQI brings people together,” she said. “These collaborations are crucial, and having more occasions to facilitate conversations is very beneficial.” 

Rowland Fellow and HQI member Ismail El Baggari finished moving into the new building in early August alongside other fellows and staff. An experimental physicist innovating low-temperature imaging technologies to study quantum materials, El Baggari is busy setting up a laboratory in the Goel Building while also continuing to access shared microscope facilities at the Center for Nanoscale Systems, just around the corner in the Laboratory for Integrated Science and Engineering. His research goals include using liquid helium to cool exotic materials down to 4 Kelvin and employing cryogenic electron microscopy to explore their quantum properties. 

“I think we have some research projects where electron microscopy would interface very nicely with HQI, and we can think of new problems to solve now that we have these cooling capabilities — things we never thought about before,” El Baggari said. “It’s fun to have these kinds of interactions and conversations, and this is definitely the spirit of bringing us all together.”