Work to begin soon on quantum commercialization center
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Purdue University Northwest could break ground soon on a planned quantum commercialization center in downtown Hammond.
Our partners at The Times of Northwest Indiana report officials are targeting a second-quarter groundbreaking for the center, which will be part of the new Roberts Impact Lab.
Plans for the center were first announced last July. Purdue Northwest Chief Engagement Officer Matt Wells told Inside INdiana Business at that time that the center will have a large focus on workforce development in the quantum sector.
“[We’ll be] anticipating what the workforce needs will be in this nascent, but rapidly growing sector and using the expertise and the resources of the university to try to cater some of our programming towards those those needs,” Wells said.
Wells said the quantum commercialization center will have a particular focus on quantum research.
“We will have opportunities for researchers and entrepreneurs to work on tech that they might not otherwise have access to on their own,” he said. “Quantum information science and engineering equipment is very expensive. If I’m a startup in this space, it’s pretty capital intensive to try to get going in some of these frontiers. So having some of that equipment housed in the laboratory…will be a resource for those folks that are working to commercialize new hardware in the quantum arena.”
The 44,000-square-foot Roberts Impact Lab is being established at the site of a former medical office building at 5454 Hohman Avenue. It’s part of a $40 million innovation district being developed in downtown Hammond.
Project Manager Andy Qunell told The Times that construction would take up to nine months to complete.
Purdue Northwest joined the Chicago region’s Bloch Tech Hub, which was named an official U.S. Regional Innovation and Technology Hub for quantum technologies by the Biden-Harris administration.