Emerging Technology, Quantum Education

The Grainger College of Engineering students can now minor in quantum science

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August 27, 2026 by Ivy Delaney

The Grainger College of Engineering will launch a new undergraduate minor in Quantum Information Science this fall, preparing students for a field predicted to be worth $2 trillion in the next decade. Designed to provide a multidisciplinary understanding of quantum principles and applications, the program draws courses from engineering, physics, computer science, and mathematics.

“Quantum is our future, and our students will be ready to face it,” said Rashid Bashir, dean of The Grainger College of Engineering. The minor’s development, beginning in 2024, responds to growing demand for a quantum-skilled workforce across both academic and industrial sectors.

Quantum Information Science Minor Launch Details for Fall 2026

The program aims to equip students with a multidisciplinary foundation in Quantum Information Science, spanning core principles and current applications. The new minor requires 16 eligible credit hours, with students selecting from courses offered in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Physics, Computer Science, Mathematics, and Materials Science and Engineering. Students must complete at least two core courses, and a minimum of six credit hours must be distinct from their major or any other minor pursued, encouraging broad exploration of the field.

Three suggested tracks, Engineering, Physics, and Theory and Computation, provide guidance for students tailoring the minor to their specific interests and career goals. Eric Chitambar, associate director of IQUIST, emphasized the practical value of the program, stating, “Companies in the quantum workforce are looking for students who have a basic understanding of Quantum Information Science principles.” This initiative builds upon Illinois Grainger Engineering’s existing leadership in quantum research, including its Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Center (IQUIST) and the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Hybrid Quantum Architectures and Networks (NSF HQAN).

The college also plays a key role at the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park in Chicago, further solidifying the state’s position as a hub for quantum innovation. Chitambar added that establishing an ecosystem for this emerging technology is a high priority for both the U.S. government and the State of Illinois, highlighting the broader strategic importance of cultivating a quantum-ready workforce.

Companies in the quantum workforce are looking for students who have a basic understanding of QIS principles.

Eric Chitambar, associate director of IQUIST
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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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