Quantum Internet, Quantum Networking

Illinois physicists join $4M push for a faster quantum internet

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August 27, 2026 by Ivy Delaney

Researchers at The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are contributing to a $4 million, two-year project to build a quantum networking system expected to be 100,000 times faster than current networks. The team, part of the ASPEN-Net initiative, aims to distribute entanglement over approximately 60 miles, creating a scalable platform for quantum communication and sensing.

Eric Chitambar explained, “I’m particularly excited because we will have the opportunity to deploy new forms of entanglement verification tests and protocols on a real quantum network.” This work expands upon initial efforts and seeks to broaden access to quantum technologies and workforce development.

ASPEN-Net Phase Two Receives $4 Million NSF Funding

The National Science Foundation has committed $4 million to support the second phase of the initiative, continuing development for the next two years. This investment will allow researchers to build upon groundwork laid in 2024, expanding a 16-node quantum networking testbed and pushing the boundaries of entanglement distribution.

Virginia Lorenz, an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor in the Department of Physics and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, emphasized the broader impact of this work, stating, “This project brings together science with a service mindset, creating a network capable of quantum advantage for the research community and building education and career pathways for others to join the quantum field.”

The network will integrate three interoperable testbeds located in Colorado, Illinois, and Oregon, focusing on applications in sensing and communications. Researchers are also prioritizing workforce development alongside technological advancement. The ASPEN-Net initiative will provide training opportunities spanning pre-college education through postgraduate studies, with a focus on equitable access to quantum science and technology.

Paul Kwiat, also of The Grainger College of Engineering, has developed an all-optical quantum memory designed to increase the network’s operational speed by several orders of magnitude. Lorenz’s Public Quantum Network, which already features a node at the Urbana Public Library, further extends the project’s reach by engaging the general public with quantum technology.

I’m particularly excited because we will have the opportunity to deploy new forms of entanglement verification tests and protocols on a real quantum network.

Eric Chitambar, Illinois Grainger Engineering professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Physics, and the Siebel School for Computing and Data Science
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Entanglement Quantum Internet Quantum Networking University of Illinois
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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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