ECE Research Scientist Chaohan Cui Awarded DARPA Award

Alongside the rapid maturation of various quantum computing and sensing platforms, the community foresees vast potential in combining heterogeneous quantum devices. A multi-institute team, directed by Dr. Chaohan Cui of the University of Maryland's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), has been awarded a substantial $2 Million two-year grant through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Heterogeneous Architectures for Quantum (HARQ) program.

The DARPA HARQ program was established to support research focusing on the design of heterogeneous quantum computing systems, aiming to advance beyond current quantum computing architectures that rely on a single type of qubit. The highly selective program seeks to move beyond classical quantum computing to interconnected heterogeneous quantum devices for processing, memory, and communications in quantum systems. The results have the potential to provide breakthrough applications for national security, industry, and society.

The foundation of Dr. Cui's planned approach is a groundbreaking paper co-authored by Dr. Cui, recently published in PRX Quantum with the title of “Hardware-Efficient Universal Linear Transformations for Optical Modes in the Synthetic Time Dimension.” The paper introduces a hardware-efficient approach to realizing time-domain photonic quantum operations that enable near-term, scalable, and reconfigurable photonic quantum processors.

Under the HARQ program, Dr. Cui will lead the creation of an on-chip version of this high-dimensional programmable time-domain photonic quantum processor. This processor will be used to integrate multiple protocols developed by his team to provide an efficient system for generating, manipulating, and measuring high-dimensional photonic quantum states over the time bins. The ultimate goal of this awarded HARQ project is to significantly boost the entanglement generation rate across multiple heterogeneous quantum processing units (QPUs), resulting in high-speed quantum interconnects between hybrid processors. The device fabrication will be handled by collaborators at Harvard University and the development of the cross-platform error correction protocol will be led by collaborators at University of California, Santa Barbara.

Dr. Cui is currently an Assistant Research Faculty member working closely with the Photonic Quantum Systems Group (PhoQuS), which is led by Clark Distinguished Chair Professor Saikat Guha. Dr. Cui also serves as a testbed manager for the Center for Quantum Networks (CQN), an interdisciplinary team funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) focusing on building a scalable quantum network and exploring its practical applications. He received his Ph.D. from the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona. His research expertise lies in integrated quantum photonics, temporal-spectral quantum optics, and quantum feedback control. Dr. Cui’s current research interests are focusing on novel optical applications with practical quantum advantages and AI-infused experimental platforms.

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Published April 22, 2026