Quantum Physics, Quantum Education

Chicago State students find quantum careers in new lab

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October 10, 2026 by Ivy Delaney
Image: Russell Ceballos, assistant professor, speaks with twin students James, left, and John Kountz about a quantum optics laboratory contained in a suitcase called the Quantenkoffer at the Quantum Educatio · iqmp.org

Identical twins John and James Kountz are pursuing career paths related to quantum physics thanks to a $250,000 quantum optics laboratory machine at Chicago State University. The engineering physics majors now spend September days gaining hands-on experience with quantum physics while searching for discrepancies in data as the brothers explore opportunities within the university’s Quantum Education, Science & Technology Center.

Quantenkoffer Lab Provides Hands-on Quantum Experience for CSU Students

Identical twins John and James Kountz, engineering physics majors, are using the equipment to identify minute discrepancies in data, a task that has unexpectedly shaped their career aspirations. The twins focused intently on a computer screen within the metal-encased Quantenkoffer, observing how two frequencies manifested as peaks and valleys. This hands-on work takes place in a darkened room, a striking contrast to typical freshman activities on a sunny September day.

The experience has supported a growing passion for quantum physics and biology, shifting the Kountz twins’ academic focus. The Quantenkoffer is housed within Chicago State University’s Quantum Education, Science & Technology Center, providing a dedicated space for students to explore the complexities of quantum mechanics and cultivating a new generation of scientists and engineers prepared for emerging roles in the field.

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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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