by Thomas Breen
Joshua Smith talks through how to repair a scanning electron microscope.
That’s a very very closeup look at a wasp’s wing. Cool!
A full house at 490 Fitch.
In a below-ground laboratory off of Fitch Street, Maggie Blanchard is working with fellow Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) students to study how fuel cells degrade — and to help keep Connecticut on the cutting edge of “quantum.”
Blanchard, 21, is a Southington native, a junior double-majoring in physics and mathematics at SCSU, and a Werth Industry Academic Fellow at the public university’s Center for Quantum & Nanotechnology.
On Monday, she joined Gov. Ned Lamont, SCSU Interim President Sandra Bulmer, SCSU Executive Director of Research and Innovation Christine Broadbridge, and a host of elected officials, higher-ed leaders, and SCSU students and faculty for a ribbon cutting celebrating the “renewal and renaming” of the school’s nanotech research center to include the word “quantum” in its title. The event took place at SCSU’s Academic Science and Laboratory Building at 490 Fitch St.
Monday’s event marked at least the fourth time in a year and a half that Lamont has stopped by New Haven for a public celebration of the state’s stepped-up investment in quantum research. That’s a cutting-edge field of scientific inquiry and technological development that Lamont framed as helping do everything from speed up drug discovery to improve risk analysis for property casualty insurance providers. Connecticut is pouring $121 million into the field, and is working with SCSU, Yale, UConn, and the nonprofit QuantumCT to expand infrastructure and training programs.
“We don’t do the dumb stuff” in Connecticut, Lamont said with pride. “We do the really complicated things.”
During her time at the mic, Blanchard said that, renaming aside, quantum is already “at the core of everything we do here” at the Center for Quantum & Nanotechnology, which before Monday’s announcement was known as just the Center for Nanotechnology.
“Every tool I’ve worked with — scanning electron microscope, transmission electron microscope, energy-dispersive spectroscopy — all work and are understood thanks to quantum mechanics,” she told the dozens of people crowded in the atrium before her, including along the stairwell. “This renaming isn’t something new, but recognizing the foundation of what we’ve all been working on all along.”
QuantumCT leader Albert Green and Broadbridge described a shift in recent years towards “Quantum 2.0” for the fields of “computing, sensing, and communications.”
“The state that moves early and builds capacity” in this quickly developing field, Green said, will have a say in “how this unfolds.” This center is an example of Connecticut doing exactly that. “The future of this field is going to be built in places like this.”
After Monday’s speaking program and ribbon cutting, Blanchard walked down the hall and into the laboratory where she and other undergrads and grad students at SCSU use some of that very same high-tech equipment to help the company Bloom Energy better understand how fuel cells degrade — and what might extend the useful lives of those battery-like devices.
“It’s a great way to see how everything works in industry” and not just in a purely academic context, she said.
Blanchard said that the scanning electron microscope allows the research team to shoot an “electron beam” at the substance they’re studying, allowing for an extremely close up view. Fellow SCSU junior and research Kyle Fitzgerald said the team is on the lookout for, say, “oxides” that may make the fuel cells they’re studying “more susceptible to degradation.”
“Electrons basically directly interface with that layer between quantum and classical physics,” said Joshua Smith, who helps maintain the lab’s scanning electron microscope. “You’re avoiding the wave effect of photons to some degree by using electrons.” This microscope allows researchers to see an image that accurately goes down “to the nanometer scale.”
“It gives the work that we put into the world a bit more strength behind what we’re saying,” Fitzgerald said about the addition of the word “quantum” to the research center’s title. The world is “kind of becoming obsessed with quantum physics and computing” right now, he said. Monday’s announcement communicates that that work is already at the center of what he and Blanchard and their SCSU peers are already doing.
Monday’s ribbon cutting.
Dr. Broadbridge.
Kyle Fitzgerald: The world is becoming more and more obsessed with quantum.
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