Sebastian Hassinger: 00:31

Welcome to the new quantum era. I'm your host, Sebastian Hassinger. On this episode, I'll be speaking with one of the first physicists that I met outside of work when I was at IBM Quantum, professor Javad Shabani from NYU. He's a professor of physics, he's also the director of the Center of Quantum Information Physics and the director of NYU Quantum Institute, which is a recently founded center in New York, which is doing some really great things. Javad is a condensed matter physicist.

Sebastian Hassinger: 01:05

He is really interesting in terms of where his curiosity has brought him. You'll hear some of his early explorations into the quantum hall effect, how that sort of brought him to spin qubits early early days in spin qubits, and then into topological materials. And now exploring more on the frontiers of of the material side of fabricating superconducting qubits, is really fascinating. Javad's great to to talk to. I've learned tons from him over the years and I've always been struck by how great a teacher he is as well to his own students.

Sebastian Hassinger: 01:50

He's really devoted and I learned from him that, you know, there needs to be a lot of effort in sort of defining what he calls sort of middle sized problems. Small problems are are relatively easy to define and there are a lot of them in textbooks and professors can come up with them for sort of earlier stage students. Big problems are obviously well under well known and enumerated in the in the field and those are suitable for sort of thesis challenges. And what's missing is sort of the the middle of the academic career, sort of mid sized problems that may take a semester or a year to work through but have hope for a near term solution or near term conclusion. And so he puts a lot of effort into thinking about those types of challenges.

Sebastian Hassinger: 02:44

So we're gonna talk a lot about what he's done in his career and what he's doing right now at NYU and at the NYU Quantum Institute. So I hope you enjoy.

Sebastian Hassinger: 03:30

Hi, Javad. Thanks for joining.

Javad Shabani: 03:32

Hi, Sebastian. Great having me.

Sebastian Hassinger: 03:35

So the I've actually been wanting to have this conversation with you for quite a while. We've known each other since probably 2018, I think. So pretty long now. That's that's that was when Sure. We had that yeah.

Sebastian Hassinger: 03:48

The academic summit at IBM, at TJ Watson. So I know you well, but my listeners may not. So can you start by introducing yourself and talking a little bit about sort of your your quantum journey?

Javad Shabani: 04:01

Sure. Sure. It is great, you know, to be here and talking to you, Sebastian. But I mean, we talked a lot over the years, but yeah. So, you know, right now, I'm a professor at NYU and director for NYU Quantum Institute and Center for Quantum Information Physics.

Javad Shabani: 04:18

And this is kind of funny actually how we got here. Right? You know? I did my undergrad. I was in electrical engineering.

Javad Shabani: 04:27

And this was, you know, when communication was very big and condensed matter and devices and Moore's law and and all of these things were kind of the key in every talk and all the excitement. And I remember one day I looked at online for a project in quantum or anything, I guess, interesting, and I found this open book by John Preskill about quantum information. And I read it, and I was fascinated by it. So I actually ended up doing a double major, electrical engineering and physics.

Sebastian Hassinger: 05:00

That was at your bachelor's level?

Javad Shabani: 05:02

That was my bachelor's. This is kinda p 2,000.

Sebastian Hassinger: 05:05

That was Sharif. Right? Sharif Tech, Cool.

Javad Shabani: 05:10

And, yeah, then when I came, you know, for graduate studies, you know, at Princeton, I, you know, did generic on this matter, you know, quantum Hall effect. And it was fascinating, but, you know, it was kind of like going back, you know, to the physics, but I was in electrical engineering, which is kind of funny that these things were always kind of intertwined. Right. And you know the last year of my PhD, kind of you know fast forwarding a bit, I worked with Jason Pedda and you know with Mansur Shayegan who was my advisor, trying to work on spin qubits. You know, Jason Petta just arrived at Princeton had already delivered this one qubit, or they recognized this quantum dot physics as a single qubit.

Javad Shabani: 05:50

And it was it was really cool. Right? It was the first time, we had this level of control. And so, you know, I kind of for my postdoc, I went to Harvard and worked where Jason was working with Charlie Marcus. And, you know, the project was literally going from one qubit to two qubit.

Javad Shabani: 06:12

So this was kind of the first time, you know, Jason came to Princeton, but then, you know, the first qubit was demonstrated. So I was really fascinated. I worked with them, kinda got to know the subject, and then, you know, as exciting as it was, I sort of said, oh, maybe I should do, you know, more of this. So I went to Harvard to work with Charlie Marcus to kind of work on taking the single qubit to two qubit. Right?

Javad Shabani: 06:33

That that was the whole thing back then. And and it was hard. Right? A lot of nanofab, a lot of material science. And and you kinda find this deeper understanding of everything that can go wrong.

Javad Shabani: 06:44

Right? Because now There's

Sebastian Hassinger: 06:46

a lot.

Javad Shabani: 06:47

There's a lot. Exactly. I mean, you know the details. Right? But sort of, you know, finding something in quantum experiments, I mean, it's hard, but when you wanna control that event, it's even you know, it gets harder because now you need a decision on everything.

Javad Shabani: 07:03

That took, you know, a couple of years and then, you know, Charlie Marcus moved to Copenhagen and I kind of was looking around and, you know, this concept of topological superconductivity and topological Right. Quantum computing was something that it kind of stuck with me from when I did my PhD because I was doing quantum Hall effect know five was the one that was supposed to be non abelian and kind of perfect for this. But you know, very theoretically oriented and also the experiment. You know, it was like kind of two field, the theory and experiment were going. Right.

Javad Shabani: 07:37

But then I thought that, oh, topological superconductivity has the qubit, has the topology, has all these nanofiber material science. So I joined, you know, Santa Barbara in a group of

Sebastian Hassinger: 07:48

Right.

Javad Shabani: 07:48

Chris Bomstrom and back then John Martin is

Sebastian Hassinger: 07:51

And just just for a second, so you mentioned quantum Hall effect in five five one half. So that that refers to the spin of the material the superconducting material. Is that right?

Javad Shabani: 08:01

No. No. It's a semiconductor. Right? Then Semiconductor.

Javad Shabani: 08:04

This two d magnetic field, you can go to this different filling factor. Right? So one Okay. Three four five is the integer quantum hall that got Nobel Prize to one. Then the fractions are the ones with the odd denominator, like one third, two third, and that's where, you know, Daniel Sui, Horst Dormer, and, you know, they got Nobel Prize, Bob Laughlin.

Sebastian Hassinger: 08:25

Okay.

Javad Shabani: 08:25

And then there was this new one that was even denominator. So two and a half, five half, that it was hard to describe and it was kind of associated with these non abillion particles. Kind of the expectations of that state maybe is, you know, seven half and and and a lot of these. And there was a huge debate whether these are the the real nonabillion or not. But in quantum hall, when you have such a huge magnetic field, it was kind of hard to decide.

Javad Shabani: 08:50

Right? I mean, there was definitely a state. I mean, I think that's established. But that kind of was in the back of my mind. Right?

Javad Shabani: 08:56

So when I went to Microsoft and that was kind of the beginning of this topic, you know, with my run of fermions that was kind of emerging, which was a different thing.

Sebastian Hassinger: 09:05

Is that when when the nanowire fabrication idea was that that was at UCSB?

Javad Shabani: 09:11

So there was like Initially? Exactly. So so that theoretically, you know, people were trying to find an alternative to this five half physics. Because five half, you had to be really cold temperatures, even colder than dilution freezers, and really hot magnetic field. Right?

Javad Shabani: 09:28

Right. It was hard to control this thing. Right? But then people said, what about if it's not as demanding? So this nanowire proposal in in so many ways was kind of a response to that physics that can have these zero dimensional myranas at the end of the wire.

Javad Shabani: 09:43

But Right. You need field, but not that much. You know, you need material science, but not at 40,000,000 mobility gallium arsenide. Right? So so things were a little bit kind of discounted and more possible.

Javad Shabani: 09:55

You know, it sounded like plausible. On the other hand, at the end, you wanted a qubit, want to scale up. It was kind of hard to see how you do it in quantum Right. At all.

Sebastian Hassinger: 10:04

Right. Because you're you're really I mean, with nanowires, you're growing the the device by depositing semiconductor on on superconducting material. Is that right? Yes. It's like a sandwich?

Javad Shabani: 10:16

Yeah. So on the nanowire, they will grow the semiconducting nanowire, and then they would put the superconductor on half of it or or part of it. On half

Sebastian Hassinger: 10:23

of it. Right.

Javad Shabani: 10:24

But you could do wafer scale in so many ways. You still have to move around the nanowires and, you know, my contribution there was that, you know, we just did this two deck, which is a two dimensional semiconductor, and we added the superconductor on top and then with nanofabrication, you go and carve out the wires that you want. So it became Wow. You know, more in line with the scaling things that the CMOS technology And and others are so this thing happened a little bit sequentially. I mean, one of the biggest challenges back there was that, you know, when you go to the superconducting qubit, people like aluminum.

Javad Shabani: 10:57

Aluminum oxide was so established, and people love it because it has so many great properties. But on the super semi, it was hard to choose one. Right? You know, everybody from quantum hall wanted gallium arsenide, but gallium arsenide has a Schottky barrier. You can't make a good metallic contact, let alone superconducting contact.

Javad Shabani: 11:15

Right? So everybody you know, I guess it was kinda known, but then it was rediscovered that indium arsenide is the material of choice.

Sebastian Hassinger: 11:24

Right.

Javad Shabani: 11:25

And then we did aluminum on indium arsenide first on nanowires, then on the two decks.

Sebastian Hassinger: 11:32

Right. So that's that's what you were designing were planar planar junctions. Right? Like, there it was right. Two dimensional rather than okay.

Sebastian Hassinger: 11:40

A simpler construction. So that's that's how you could potentially leverage that higher scale fabrication techniques.

Javad Shabani: 11:47

Exactly. I mean, when we were in Santa Barbara Yeah. We were still pursuing this. I think, the nanowire system, which was kind of still one dimensional. When I moved back to New York and started my lab, we kind of followed this, I guess, Josephson junction style and, I guess, wires in a way that, you know, the current now is not going along the wire.

Javad Shabani: 12:06

It's going, you know, on the other side. But the advantage is that now you have phase of the superconducting junction as a very well defined knob, so you could actually control things with the superconducting phase. And then we kind of piggyback on everything superconducting circuit just with the supersemi now, and that opened up a whole new thing. Right? And then, you know, I think it was in twenty eighteen, nineteen that we saw these signatures of, you know, superconducting closing and reopening.

Javad Shabani: 12:36

We published this paper in PRL that really looked like a phase transition and perhaps, you know, topological superconductivity.

Sebastian Hassinger: 12:44

Right. And is you know, most recently, you've had a paper published from PRX about Gatemon qubits.

Javad Shabani: 12:53

That's

Sebastian Hassinger: 12:53

right. So these are these are superconducting. These are more like a transmon or a flexonium type superconducting Right? Yeah. So that shift, is that, is that because just interested in a different topic, or was there sort of a dead end with the the planar junctions, in terms of, you know, control or some other aspect of the design?

Javad Shabani: 13:17

Yeah, so I actually see them very complementary in a way that, you know, we have these junctions, and obviously we want to make these topological states, There is disorder. There are lots of other things that you have to slowly figure out. And then we are we were doing it. Right? It's a slow progress.

Javad Shabani: 13:34

Right? But then we had the junctions available. Right? Not maybe for

Sebastian Hassinger: 13:37

I see.

Javad Shabani: 13:37

This topology because it still needs magnetic field and the superconducting thing has to be thin. But we kind of knew that when it is ready, we have to run it as a qubit. So we said, look. Why not? We're just gonna make it qubit and then see how it is.

Sebastian Hassinger: 13:49

So it's the underlying it's the underlying superconducting qubit that eventually that'll be an aspect of the eventual Majorana or topological qubit.

Javad Shabani: 13:59

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Again, That back then

Sebastian Hassinger: 14:01

makes sense.

Javad Shabani: 14:02

In nanowires, they had done it and it kind of really showed interesting stuff. And then we sort of said, look, let's just do it. And it is hard. I mean, turned out that it is a tough problem because, you know, one of the advantages that, you know, the aluminum oxide systems don't have is that semiconductors, can control their properties with a gate voltage, like like very much like a transistor. So you can actually turn off and on these qubits very fast.

Javad Shabani: 14:30

Right? Right. In the nanosecond regime. And Right. And in terms

Sebastian Hassinger: 14:34

of coupling them, right? You're talking about like coupling and uncoupling the the qubits?

Javad Shabani: 14:38

Yeah. It could be the qubits itself. It could be the coupling in the middle. Okay. Kind of goes, you know, all aspects of this.

Javad Shabani: 14:45

And Right. We found out that actually maybe, you know, because of the qubits, we're not so far, the cubits are not that good because we think indium arsenide is piezoelectric, and maybe there is something fundamental with this material. Maybe not. I mean, we we we are still exploring. But definitely, as a coupler, it can actually do quite well.

Javad Shabani: 15:03

Right? So now that we know we can do microwave, maybe we can do topology. You know, we have been trying efforts, trying to merge these things together for fast manipulation. Right? So it's still working properly.

Sebastian Hassinger: 15:15

Interesting. That's so interesting. It, you know, it it feels more and more like there's this emergent generation of qubits that are combining aspects of microwave, of photonics, of superconducting, like, all of these different learnings from these different experiments in the sort of the the first or second wave of qubits.

Javad Shabani: 15:36

Right.

Sebastian Hassinger: 15:36

Is that something that you sort of see as a, you know, eventually we'll have these very complex hybrid systems that are qubits that combine a bunch of things we've learned from all these different experimental modalities.

Javad Shabani: 15:48

Exactly. I I think, you know, a lot of these things are also inspirational. Like, you know Mhmm. I was quoting myself yesterday. I was trying to talk to a theory friend, and I was like, you know, behind every great experimentalist, there is a greater theorist.

Javad Shabani: 16:02

And you know, for example, Charlie Tahaan that that that I guess you know, you know, he has been really advocating for these semiconducting qubits that come in any variety, but but hopefully in group four because we know silicon and germanium. These these things are the things that we can go to the CMOS foundries and maybe make, you know, millions of this, and then maybe that's

Sebastian Hassinger: 16:23

all the dream. Right?

Javad Shabani: 16:24

That's the dream. Right?

Sebastian Hassinger: 16:25

Is is use just the the garden variety semiconductor CMOS technologies and do make millions and millions and millions of them.

Javad Shabani: 16:33

So so that that was really kind of, I would say, the inspiration behind most of the things that we have been doing. And in indium arsenide, it was kind of I don't wanna say low hanging fruit, but we figured it out, and it worked really nice. And I think it has become the textbook example of anything super semi you wanna try. Right? But then in case of qubit, obviously, it didn't give us what we wanted, at least the regular superconducting qubit.

Javad Shabani: 16:55

For topology, maybe it still is the way. And and that because of that, you know, in the last five years, I've been trying to do this thing with germanium. Right? Try to kind of get this thing on a group four, same super semi, and and then see if we can scale this thing up. And and we have a paper who will come out actually this week, I think, or maybe next week

Sebastian Hassinger: 17:16

Oh, great.

Javad Shabani: 17:17

That is accepted in Nature Nano. It's a it is basically it's a huge material effort with the inspiration from this discussion that we just had

Sebastian Hassinger: 17:28

Oh, great.

Javad Shabani: 17:28

That how can I because it's kind of a from the material science point of view, it's it's really exciting and interesting and puzzling at the same time? Like, let's say you have a superconductor. You wanna put it on a semiconductor. Right? That's usually easy.

Javad Shabani: 17:41

Like, I wanna put aluminum on indium arsenide. It's very easy. But if I wanna put indium arsenide on aluminum, it doesn't work. Like Mhmm. Because these interfaces are polar and they are not compatible, usually, material a goes very well on b, but b doesn't go on a.

Sebastian Hassinger: 17:58

So That's so interesting.

Javad Shabani: 17:59

But you want a Josephson junction vertical, you did the stack.

Sebastian Hassinger: 18:02

Right.

Javad Shabani: 18:02

Right?

Sebastian Hassinger: 18:03

Yeah.

Javad Shabani: 18:04

Same thing with aluminum. Actually, aluminum oxide, the the bottom is crystalline, oxide is amorphous, and then the top is not as good as the bottom, obviously, because you're kind of growing on this thing. Right? And then Right. We think of TLS.

Javad Shabani: 18:17

We think about a lot of things that, you know, maybe the variety of the junction. We should make them uniform. And IBM has been doing great job in terms of annealing and things like that. Right? So but, you know, I've been asking myself, how can you do this?

Javad Shabani: 18:31

Right? How can you really do a super semi super junction in a vertical direction, which ended up in this paper I just mentioned to you that we've we have been able to make germanium superconducting by just doping it, doping it with gallium. So now I can dope it and grow germanium. It becomes superconducting. I turn off my doping.

Javad Shabani: 18:52

I semiconducting germanium. I turn on my doping. I create another superconducting germanium. Wow. Now I have a three inch Josephson junction on a wafer escape.

Javad Shabani: 19:03

Right? Wow. And then you can go and make these 10 micron pixels, and now you can put 20,000,000 of these junctions on one wafer. Right? Don't know how big they are.

Javad Shabani: 19:13

I don't know if it's gonna be. Yeah. But but these are the things that just really drives me. Right? Because now I can

Sebastian Hassinger: 19:19

do Yeah. Yeah.

Javad Shabani: 19:19

Semi on a group four. That's gonna kind of lead, and maybe germanium is good enough. Maybe we have to go to silicon. I'm really excited about this.

Sebastian Hassinger: 19:29

That's cool. So next stage would be characterizing the what you've what you've grown and then trying to see what kind of device performance you can get out of it. That's amazing. That's super exciting. So that's that's an example of what you've done at NYU.

Sebastian Hassinger: 19:44

Is that within the context of the larger NYU quantum center that you've just launched?

Javad Shabani: 19:50

Yeah. So so that's that's very exciting. So we started a few years ago with Center for Quantum Information Physics, and the goal is, look, quantum is a hard topic. Right? Quantum computing is even harder, and we need help across the board.

Javad Shabani: 20:04

We need to collaborate even nationally and internationally. And, you know, if this marathon we wanna do well, we have to do it. So I think these centers are the key, and and we have these centers, you know, in physics department to really kind of focus and strategize how we're gonna approach quantum. And and we have been successful locally in the last few years. But more exciting was, as you know, and and you are really variable and maybe more than me, is that, look, it's a whole ecosystem there.

Javad Shabani: 20:31

Like, there is application side. There is algorithmic side. Hardware is probably a small piece of this as we kinda grow. Right?

Sebastian Hassinger: 20:39

A crucial piece. A crucial piece.

Javad Shabani: 20:41

Exactly. We don't wanna we want the hardware to be ours for sure. Yeah. But then there is a whole, like there is a chemistry piece. There is this material science Absolutely.

Javad Shabani: 20:52

Scanning, all that. So that's why, you know, with the new actually, we have an office of science and technology and with the leadership of, you know, Doctor. Juan DiPablo, who recently moved from University of Chicago to NYU. Identified quantum as a, you know, hot topic that we need to invest on at the university level, and we established this NYU Quantum Institute. This institute kind of goes across all disciplines.

Javad Shabani: 21:21

Right? It's not about physics. It's about engineering. It's about collaboration. It's about application side, algorithmic development.

Javad Shabani: 21:29

You know, we have Quran. Right. We have math department. And same thing from chemistry, like computational problems, like the quantum chemistry. You know, you to go to the experts and then see, look, if this quantum algorithm is any good, right, and Right.

Javad Shabani: 21:43

Can you do better, right? So we are really coordinating this now as, you know, a university wide operation. And I think, you know, a couple of things makes it super exciting in New York. Like, obviously, NYU is at the heart of New York. Right?

Javad Shabani: 21:55

We are in Washington Square. But a lot of these kind of application things, the end users are basically in big cities, including New York. Right? Yeah. People who care at finance financial institutions, people like insurance, medical for sensing and communication.

Javad Shabani: 22:12

And so so I think we are at the we would be basically the hub or or the connector or the interface basically between, you know, hardcore science and kind of, you know, keeping the line and honest and, you know, developing things. And then on the other end, we have people who really need this. So we are they'd love to be at the forefront of this. Sure. Kinda connecting this together, I think that's one of our mission.

Javad Shabani: 22:39

Yeah. Obviously

Sebastian Hassinger: 22:40

Is it do you do you see this being somewhat analogous to the Chicago Quantum Exchange that the University of Chicago created back in, I think, '28, '17 or '18?

Javad Shabani: 22:51

Certainly. Is it

Sebastian Hassinger: 22:51

sort of the the New York I mean, there are a bunch of these regional centers. Right? It feels like, in a way, it's I mean, clearly New York City should be Right. The center of the region Right. And it feels like almost overdue That's right.

Sebastian Hassinger: 23:04

Investment from from the the is the state or NYU in the state are collaborating on sort of larger larger ecosystem development?

Javad Shabani: 23:11

So we love to, obviously. Right? And we do Yeah. Actually talk to Chicago Exchange and in particular, the the Ashlam about the lessons and then how do we actually do a follow-up on that. But but, again, as you can imagine, each state is different and the priorities are different and the level of investment.

Javad Shabani: 23:27

So we are working That's

Sebastian Hassinger: 23:28

the argument that's the argument for a regional center. Right? Because there are differences in terms of priorities and the capabilities and resources, etcetera. So yeah.

Javad Shabani: 23:36

Yeah. So we are working at city level and the state level, but definitely at the NYU level, you know, we have, you know, our strength is kind of in all the finance institutes and and kind of a lot of people and and also the population. Right? We have more than 1,000,000 high schoolers in New York City. Right?

Javad Shabani: 23:53

So and a lot of them are interested in AI and quantum and then how this space is gonna develop. Right? So in terms of educational aspects, you know, this kind of north you know, and New York by itself as a state plus, you know, Connecticut, New Jersey, you know, there is this whole, like, I think, ecosystem that hopefully we will develop into something that the state and federal is gonna support like Chicago. But, you know, I think already, like, Columbia, NYU, Stevens Yeah. City College, Princeton, Yale, you know, RPI Right.

Javad Shabani: 24:23

Cornell. We are we are collaborating on on smaller things, you know, in different proposals and all that. And and we will I'm sure at some point, we will have an umbrella, but

Sebastian Hassinger: 24:33

Well, and that that incremental sort of bottoms up collaborative approach is is really great. I mean, I think that that that lays the the foundation, and exposes the the patterns that are effective. Right? Like, if there's a a specific, you know, collaborative partnership that emerges between whatever, AFRL and RPI and NYU, for example, then then you can you can codify that and scale it up in some way Exactly. By by making by bringing the region to bear.

Sebastian Hassinger: 24:59

That's really cool.

Javad Shabani: 25:00

And I think, you know, you also the more you won and and the more you are open, that also kind of changes things. Like, you know, there is the chips act that, you know, in Nordec. There is a quantum thing, you know, in terms of how you make quantum foundries and then things like that, and we are part of that. Right? So through that, now we are connected, you know, with NY Creates, people who actually care about 200 millimeter, 300 millimeter operations.

Javad Shabani: 25:24

We have our engineering department, you know, kind of engaged in the quantum effort. At the same time, you know, with CTQA, you know, Brookhaven operation, and so we are trying to actually be proactive on that. I think a lot of these things, sometimes you don't know what you can collaborate on. But if you are kind of open minded and, you know, you are willing to learn, it's a lot of opportunities that come your way. Absolutely.

Sebastian Hassinger: 25:47

Yeah. And it's also I mean, what I've seen over the last, you know, seven or eight years is each you know, you can almost think of each university that has a quantum information research sort of agenda, has a lot of the same, themes. Right? It's it's materials, it's, you know, building, the many body systems and simulations, it's, algorithms, as you said, And then when universities start collaborating with each other, they start to get more nuanced understanding of like, oh, within algorithms, we're better at chemistry, or we're better at, you know, optimization, or whatever. Within materials where, you know, here are our strengths, here's the other university's strengths.

Sebastian Hassinger: 26:29

The more you start to glue these pieces together, the more you see, you know, those complementary kind of of combinations and collaborations emerging. Exactly. So it's very exciting. And you just had, I think, was it the fifth or sixth New York Quantum Summit?

Javad Shabani: 26:47

I think it was fourth Quantum Summit. Okay. It sounds like a

Sebastian Hassinger: 26:50

lot better I than missed as many as I thought I'd missed. Okay. So is that going to that summit has been initially, I think you started with with Columbia. Right? It was NYU and Columbia

Javad Shabani: 27:05

So we

Sebastian Hassinger: 27:06

had that started the summit?

Javad Shabani: 27:07

So so when I joined NYU, yeah, we had this joint quantum symposium, I think it was called.

Sebastian Hassinger: 27:14

Right. That's right.

Javad Shabani: 27:15

That was a joint effort between Flatiron, Columbia, and NYU, which we loved.

Sebastian Hassinger: 27:20

Right.

Javad Shabani: 27:20

And then some of us moved on and then, you know, at you know, people Right. Just had different things. And and basically, we decided that, you know, like anything else, you have to put resources behind it and then, you know, some people eventually, NYU kind of decided that, you know, we have those resources. So we kind of turned that into this quantum summit. So you actually Got it.

Javad Shabani: 27:40

Found those joint seminars, I think this would be Right. The Okay. You're right, actually.

Sebastian Hassinger: 27:44

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Javad Shabani: 27:45

But something that is also amazing amazing in the six years or so that we have done this is that, you know, back then, you could make any quantum claim and people would ask each other and panic and all that. Right? Now, there is so much knowledge and education that you're kind of vaccinated to some of these hypes and and this and that. Right? So that's another amazing thing, you know, when I went to this year.

Javad Shabani: 28:06

You know, it's not that people don't know. They wanna know more. They wanna know the state of the art. They wanna know what is, you know, in the next five years. You know?

Javad Shabani: 28:12

It's not that what is quantum anymore. Right? What is a qubit anymore. Right? It's amazing how far we have come.

Javad Shabani: 28:18

Even at IBM, remember, we were working together on kind of basic stuff. Now, you know, there are 100 qubits. You know? I just told you on my postdoc was on two. Right?

Javad Shabani: 28:27

Five, you know, hundreds of qubits that are 10, you know, many, many times better than what I did used to do. Right? And Yeah. I also think, you know, a lot of times you don't wanna reinvent the wheel, but sometimes you don't have enough wheels. So it's not that, you know, if Chicago has it or, you know, California has it Yeah.

Javad Shabani: 28:44

Or, you know, Colorado has

Sebastian Hassinger: 28:45

it. Absolutely.

Javad Shabani: 28:46

You know, they're all you need to be more and bigger, I I think. Absolutely. And then also be open to collaboration and sharing. Right? We don't certainly, don't wanna spend time on doing the exact same thing.

Javad Shabani: 28:57

But Right. I do feel with this summit, for example, like, we bring people from consulting firms, from finance, from, you know, insurance companies, very wide variety government labs. Right? As you said, AFRL, Brookhaven, you know, MIT Lincoln Lab, and and the same thing from academics coming in with with the hope to sort of see how we can move things together. Right?

Javad Shabani: 29:17

You know, how how excited it should be. And then every year, we come back with some new things that, you know, we did this quantum networking in New York City. I don't know if I told you about that. Right. So we have

Sebastian Hassinger: 29:28

Yeah.

Javad Shabani: 29:29

Five nodes in New York, in Manhattan, and Brooklyn.

Sebastian Hassinger: 29:32

That's incredible. Right? Yeah.

Javad Shabani: 29:33

And, you know, NYU doesn't have a campus in so many ways like other campuses, but because we're distributed, we actually own the fibers in the IT program. So we can actually use this for short distance quantum communication, and short distance is the key in Manhattan because, you know, the three dB of losing a photon is is usually a few kilometers, 10 kilometers or so.

Sebastian Hassinger: 29:55

So

Javad Shabani: 29:56

this came out out of a collaboration with QNEC, which is a startup company, and then Cisco now is interested. I mean, there's a whole ecosystem around this now that let's start on networking in New York. Right? That has been happening now.

Sebastian Hassinger: 30:09

That's really cool. I mean, does seem like the financial sector in particular might be very interested in class and So so that's fitting. I I love the way, you know, you've described your own sort of interest all the way from the most fundamental characteristics of materials and their behaviors with one another, all the way up to, you know, 300 millimeter fab or wafer fabrication, and, you know, the the potential for building, you know, scale resources to to actually do that, to manufacture that at at scale. It feels like that's the it's that ability to straddle that incredibly broad Right.

Javad Shabani: 30:55

Set

Sebastian Hassinger: 30:55

of challenges from from, you know, the the the quantum nature of the material all the way up to the industrial scale of the of the devices. So it it's is that like, when you're sort of, you know, choosing your next sort of stage of your experimentation, do you are you thinking about that balance, or is it just sort of it's naturally sort of one foot in front of the other?

Javad Shabani: 31:21

No. Can't remember I said, you know, I was electrical engineering, and then I kind of Yeah. Double major with physics. So I think I've always was this applied person that kind of, you know Right. Thinks about the physics that kind of I wanna see the extrapolation that kind of lines up with the engineering side.

Javad Shabani: 31:36

And because, you know, found fundamentalist stuff are as important as the engineering side of things. Mhmm. If you look at, you know, the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics, right, I guess, you interviewed John. Yeah. You know, that study was really fundamental, and now there is a whole industry after that.

Javad Shabani: 31:51

Right?

Sebastian Hassinger: 31:51

Right.

Javad Shabani: 31:52

And and it shows that, you know, both have real values and and Right. You know, maybe different mindsets, but, you know, that's what I love to do, to kind of, like, discover new things. But but you have to ask for our, you know, return of investment. Right? You know, you're gonna do this.

Javad Shabani: 32:07

You wanna do group four. Right? You don't wanna go group six because Right. If you are thinking about 300 millimeter, nobody guarantees, you know, group four, you can make it superconducting, but that's where you wanna bang your head to the wall.

Sebastian Hassinger: 32:19

Right. Right. Well, I'm I'm so excited to hear about the this paper coming out in in Nature Nano. I'm looking forward to reading it and looking forward to seeing how good those junctions are. That's just

Javad Shabani: 32:31

to characterize them. Me too.

Sebastian Hassinger: 32:34

That's great, Javad. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been really, really interesting.

Javad Shabani: 32:39

It was a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Sebastian Hassinger: 32:55

Thank you for listening to another episode of the podcast, a production of the New Quantum Era, hosted by me, Sebastian Hassinger, with theme music by OCH. You can find past episodes on www.newquantumera.com or on blue sky at newquantumera.com. If you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and tell your quantum curious friends to give it a listen.