Quantum Research News, Quantum Funding

University of Waterloo Receives $7.1M for Quantum & Multidiscipline Research

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July 13, 2026 by Ivy Delaney

A $149,945 investment will bolster the development of quantum sensors at the University of Waterloo, funding millimeter-wave infrastructure designed by Bradley Hauer, Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. This is among $7.1 million in new funding allocated through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s Discovery Research program to over 100 researchers across multiple disciplines. David Gosset, Professor in the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization, received a $53,000 grant, the first of five installments, to research quantum advantage, classical simulation, and complexity. Adam Wei Tsen, Professor, will pursue fundamental quantum research with a $49,000 grant, the first of five installments, focused on Visualization and Control of Moiré Quantum Matter.

Bradley Hauer will use a $149,945 Research Tools and Instruments grant to bolster millimeter-wave infrastructure, critical for developing advanced quantum sensors; the project benefits from collaboration with Drs. Adrian Lupascu and Christopher Wilson. This investment directly addresses the need for specialized equipment to push the boundaries of quantum measurement technology, enabling more precise and sensitive detection methods. Adam Wei Tsen is receiving $49,000, the initial payment of a five-installment grant, for Visualization and Control of Moiré Quantum Matter. These NSERC grants, totaling over $7.1 million across the University of Waterloo, underscore a broad commitment to fundamental research in multiple disciplines, with the IQC faculty playing a central role.

This research differs from efforts focused solely on quantum computing hardware, concentrating instead on rigorously demonstrating when and why quantum computers will surpass classical systems. Gosset’s work aims to define the specific computational problems where quantum solutions offer a definitive advantage, a critical step beyond simply building more powerful quantum processors. “Quantum advantage, classical simulation, and complexity” represents a focused effort to prove quantum supremacy, rather than assume it. These grants, along with Dr. Wilson’s $49,000 Discovery Grant for quantum microwaves, highlight a diverse portfolio of quantum research at the University of Waterloo.

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Avatar of Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney has been working with neural networks and machine learning since the mid-nineties, back when a couple of hidden layers and a long afternoon of training counted as ambitious. She has watched the field go from academic curiosity to the thing quietly running underneath everything, and she brings that long view to quantum computing. For Quantum Zeitgeist she covers the ground where the two fields meet. That means quantum machine learning and the variational algorithms it leans on, and it also means the less glamorous but more interesting story of classical machine learning already doing real work inside quantum machines, decoding error-correcting codes, calibrating noisy hardware and learning the error models that simulators depend on. She writes about the hardware those algorithms have to run on too, and about the post-quantum cryptography scramble that the same hardware has set off. Her stories typically start with the paper, whether that is peer-reviewed work, conference proceedings or an arXiv preprint, with the source linked so you can hold a claim up against the research it came from. She is unimpressed by benchmarks that will not say what they beat, and by demonstrations that only work in the press release.

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