Quantum science has made enormous strides in the laboratory. Researchers can now build machines that manipulate quantum bits, transmit quantum information, and create materials with properties that seem to defy everyday intuition.

The harder problem is turning those achievements into technologies that can be manufactured, connected and used at scale. At NYU, that challenge is shaping a broad effort that stretches from the atomic structure of new materials to the fabrication of quantum chips and the networks that may someday connect quantum machines together. Researchers including Javad Shabani, Davood Shahrjerdi and Aziza Almanakly are working on different parts of the same question: how to transform the unusual rules of quantum mechanics into practical engineered systems.

That effort is now poised to expand significantly. New York City through the Economic Development Corporation has awarded NYU $29.2 million toward the development of a new Quantum Fabrication Facility, or QFab. Announced in October of this year, the planned facility — to be located at the University’s new home for Science and Technology, 770 Broadway in Manhattan — will provide specialized equipment for manufacturing, testing and prototyping the chips and other components needed for quantum technologies.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani stands at a podium.

“ Right now, on a subatomic level, technologies are being developed that will revolutionize the way that we live. Technologies that will help us diagnose diseases and develop vaccines more effectively. It will help us predict traffic patterns and ensure that our buses can run faster. And that will help us engineer the materials needed to build a greener future. "

- NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Announcing NYC investment in a new quantum fabrication facility at New York University, October 14, 2026

Expected to open in early 2030, QFab is designed to occupy an important middle ground between academic laboratories and commercial semiconductor foundries. Researchers will be able to test new device concepts without immediately facing the expense and rigid requirements of large-scale manufacturing. Startups will gain access to tools that would otherwise be difficult to afford. Students and technicians will be able to train on the equipment that an emerging quantum industry will need.

QFab will be a critical arrow in the quiver to recruit burgeoning quantum companies to the city, fill empty office space, and attract talent and funding. NYU plans to collaborate with the City University of New York to provide broad access to the facility and building programs and events. It is expected to reach over 35,000 New Yorkers in 10 years of operations, create thousands of jobs, incubate dozens of companies, and bring in $80 million of follow-on investment.

The facility is also a physical expression of the larger idea behind the NYU Quantum Institute: quantum technologies will not advance through physics alone. Their development requires materials scientists, electrical engineers, computer scientists, fabrication experts and others working closely together. The institute, directed by Javad Shabani, brings those communities together around three broad areas: quantum computing, quantum sensing and quantum communication

Quantum cooler

"The quantu35. This fabrication facility, or QFab, will help to place our city at the forefront of this moment of opportunity.”

- NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Announcing NYC investment in a new quantum fabrication facility at New York University, October 14, 2026

Zohran Mamdani stands beside Juan De Pablo

Toward More Robust
Quantum Qubits

For Shabani, one of the central questions begins with the materials themselves. Quantum computers rely on qubits, the quantum counterpart to the bits inside conventional computers. Ordinary bits represent either a zero or a one. Qubits can occupy combinations of states, a property that gives quantum computers their potential power but also makes them extraordinarily fragile.

Heat, electromagnetic noise, material defects and microscopic imperfections can all disturb a quantum state. Much of Shabani’s research asks whether better materials can make qubits more reliable.

His laboratory studies hybrid systems that combine semiconductors and superconductors. Using molecular beam epitaxy, researchers can grow extremely pure materials layer by layer and control their interfaces with great precision. Those interfaces can produce quantum behaviors that neither material exhibits on its own.

One long-term goal is topological quantum computing. Today’s quantum computers require extensive error correction because quantum information is so easily disturbed. Topological approaches aim to protect information more fundamentally by encoding it in quantum states that are naturally less sensitive to local disturbances.

Shabani’s group has studied semiconductor-superconductor structures that may support unusual quantum states related to Majorana zero modes. These systems have attracted considerable attention because they could provide a path toward more robust qubits.

His work also asks how quantum devices might eventually connect with the broader semiconductor industry. That is a crucial issue for scalability. The more quantum components can be fabricated using materials and techniques compatible with established chipmaking, the easier it may become to move from experimental devices to larger systems.

A man standing in front of a large machine in a laboratory. — Javad Shabani in his laboratory.

Javad Shabani in his laboratory.

But identifying a promising quantum material is only the beginning. It must also be shaped into a working device. That is where the work of people like Davood Shahrjerdi becomes critical.

Shahrjerdi, a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NYU Tandon, directs the NYU Nanofabrication Cleanroom in Brooklyn. His research focuses on advanced electronic materials, nanotechnology and the fabrication processes needed to transform novel materials into functional devices.

Nanofabrication is the largely invisible foundation beneath modern electronics. Researchers deposit thin films, pattern them with lithography and selectively remove material to create structures at the micro- and nanoscale. Quantum devices make those processes especially demanding.

A man in a blue suit standing in front of a group of people, holding an object in his hand. Behind him is a wooden wall with a screen on it.

Davood Shahrjerdi.

A defect that might be inconsequential in a conventional circuit can degrade or destroy a quantum state. Surfaces and interfaces must be exceptionally clean. Fabrication methods themselves can damage sensitive materials. The facility supports work across semiconductors, quantum materials, communications, biomedical technologies and other fields. It also provides a prototyping environment where researchers can move ideas out of the laboratory and toward manufacturing. Shahrjerdi’s group has focused in part on fabrication techniques for superconducting quantum hardware.

Some promising superconducting materials are difficult to pattern using conventional semiconductor processes because they react poorly to the chemicals involved. Those reactions can damage the very properties that make the materials useful.

Shahrjerdi and collaborators have explored low-energy ion beam etching as an alternative. Rather than relying primarily on chemical reactions, the method uses physical bombardment to shape material. Using niobium, a common superconducting material, the researchers fabricated superconducting resonators with strong performance while demonstrating a process that could potentially be extended to a wider range of materials.

That matters because quantum engineering is still searching for the best combinations of materials and device designs. A fabrication process that allows scientists to work with more kinds of superconductors expands the range of possibilities they can test.

A defect that might be inconsequential in a conventional circuit can degrade or destroy a quantum state. Surfaces and interfaces must be exceptionally clean. Fabrication methods themselves can damage sensitive materials. The facility supports work across semiconductors, quantum materials, communications, biomedical technologies and other fields. It also provides a prototyping environment where researchers can move ideas out of the laboratory and toward manufacturing. Shahrjerdi’s group has focused in part on fabrication techniques for superconducting quantum hardware.

Some promising superconducting materials are difficult to pattern using conventional semiconductor processes because they react poorly to the chemicals involved. Those reactions can damage the very properties that make the materials useful.

Shahrjerdi and collaborators have explored low-energy ion beam etching as an alternative. Rather than relying primarily on chemical reactions, the method uses physical bombardment to shape material. Using niobium, a common superconducting material, the researchers fabricated superconducting resonators with strong performance while demonstrating a process that could potentially be extended to a wider range of materials.

That matters because quantum engineering is still searching for the best combinations of materials and device designs. A fabrication process that allows scientists to work with more kinds of superconductors expands the range of possibilities they can test.

The Nanofab Cleanroom has continued to add tools aimed at quantum applications, including systems that can deposit materials with control approaching the atomic scale. QFab represents the next step in that trajectory.

While an academic cleanroom is ideal for developing new fabrication processes and testing fundamental ideas, QFab is intended to serve as a translation hub. It will provide specialized cleanrooms, cryogenic systems and manufacturing tools for researchers and companies developing quantum chips and related components.

The facility is expected to support dozens of startups, help incubate new companies and anchor additional faculty hiring at NYU. It will also place substantial emphasis on workforce development, including partnerships with CUNY, certificate programs, internships, boot camps and other training opportunities.

That workforce challenge is easy to overlook. A mature quantum industry will need far more than quantum physicists. It will need engineers who understand microwave electronics, specialists capable of operating cryogenic systems, materials scientists who can diagnose atomic-scale defects, technicians who maintain fabrication equipment, programmers who design quantum algorithms and manufacturing experts who can turn a laboratory process into something repeatable.

The institute spans disciplines rather than fitting neatly into a single academic department. Its researchers work across physics, engineering, computer science and other areas, with facilities in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. The goal is to shorten the distance between fundamental discovery and practical implementation.

Where Quantum
Devices Take Shape

Aziza Almanakly’s work shows why that integration matters. An Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NYU Tandon, Almanakly studies superconducting quantum systems, but her work extends beyond individual processors. She is interested in how quantum devices communicate with one another. Her new laboratory, the ALMA Lab for Atoms, Light, and Microwaves, investigates microwave quantum optics, superconducting quantum interconnects and quantum sensing.

Today’s quantum computers are generally self-contained machines. But classical computing became vastly more useful when individual parts of computers were connected into modular networks. Researchers expect quantum technology may eventually require a similar transition.

Instead of building one enormous quantum processor, engineers may be able to connect smaller quantum systems so they work together.

Doing that requires a new kind of interconnect. Quantum information cannot simply be copied and retransmitted the way ordinary digital information can. Moving it between processors requires carefully controlling quantum states while preventing them from interacting with the environment.

Almanakly’s research has examined how superconducting qubits can communicate through microwave photons traveling along engineered pathways. During her doctoral research, she worked on waveguide quantum electrodynamics, a field that studies interactions between artificial quantum systems and photons moving through controlled channels. Her work demonstrated a chiral quantum interconnect capable of directing microwave photons and creating entanglement between remote superconducting systems.

Entanglement is one of the defining features of quantum mechanics. Two quantum systems can become correlated in ways that have no classical equivalent, even when they are physically separated. For quantum computing, that relationship can become a resource. If engineers can reliably distribute entanglement among processors, they may be able to construct modular quantum computers in which many smaller devices act together as a larger system.

Almanakly is therefore addressing a problem that sits between device physics, communication and computer architecture. Her laboratory combines superconducting circuits, microwave engineering, cryogenic experimentation, theoretical modeling and quantum control. It is also exploring quantum sensing, where the extreme sensitivity of quantum systems could be used to measure very weak signals.

A group of people standing under a purple tent, smiling and posing for a photo. — Javad Shabani, Eric Vieira, Aziza Almanakly, John DiBartolo. Photo Credit: NYU Photo Bureau - Kashon Jones

Javad Shabani, Eric Vieira, Aziza Almanakly, John DiBartolo. Photo Credit: NYU Photo Bureau - Kashon Jones

NYU’s growing quantum ecosystem is designed around that flexibility. Around them, the Quantum Institute provides an intellectual framework, the Nanofab provides existing fabrication infrastructure, and QFab is intended to create a new bridge toward prototyping and commercialization. Together, those efforts point toward a particular vision of quantum engineering.

The future of the field will not be defined by a single machine or discovery. It will depend on the ability to move repeatedly between fundamental science and practical engineering, between atomic-scale materials and large-scale systems. Over the next several years, it will also take shape in a new fabrication facility built around a deceptively simple idea: quantum discoveries will matter most when researchers can learn how to build with them.

The future of the field will not be defined by a single machine or discovery. It will depend on the ability to move repeatedly between fundamental science and practical engineering, between atomic-scale materials and large-scale systems.Her research also demonstrates why the different layers of NYU’s quantum effort cannot easily be separated. A quantum network depends on high-quality devices. Those devices depend on fabrication processes capable of producing clean, reliable structures. Fabrication depends on understanding how materials behave at microscopic interfaces. And new materials can force engineers to rethink how devices should be designed in the first place.

That cycle runs through the work of Shabani, Shahrjerdi and Almanakly. Shabani investigates the materials and quantum states that could underpin future devices. Shahrjerdi develops the fabrication approaches needed to turn new materials into hardware. Almanakly studies how quantum hardware can communicate and function as part of a larger system.

The work rarely proceeds in a straight line, and requires a lot of time, energy and space applied to it.

Quantum science requires equipment that is expensive, specialized and often inaccessible outside major national laboratories, universities or technology companies. Cleanrooms, cryogenic systems, high-precision deposition tools and sophisticated measurement platforms can all become barriers between an idea and a working prototype. NYU’s strategy is to lower those barriers while concentrating expertise in one ecosystem.

For New York City, that effort also has implications beyond the university. The city has major concentrations of finance, telecommunications, health care, technology companies and venture investment, all of which could eventually become users, partners or investors in quantum technologies. New York State also has a well-developed semiconductor ecosystem that includes chip fabrication, research centers and advanced manufacturing expertise. QFab is intended to connect academic research with that broader landscape.

For faculty, it will provide space to test unconventional ideas. For startups, it could reduce the cost and complexity of developing first-generation devices. For students, it will provide hands-on experience with the equipment and processes used in quantum hardware. For industry, it could create a place to collaborate directly with researchers working at the frontier of the field.

The timing is important because quantum technology remains unsettled. There is still no consensus about which qubit technology will ultimately prove most scalable. Superconducting circuits, trapped ions, neutral atoms, semiconductor spins, photonic systems and topological approaches all have active research communities. Different technologies may ultimately serve different purposes.

The same uncertainty surrounds applications. Quantum computing attracts the most attention, but quantum sensing and communication may mature along different timelines and find their own commercial uses. That uncertainty favors institutions capable of supporting multiple approaches rather than betting everything on a single platform.

That cycle runs through the work of Shabani, Shahrjerdi and Almanakly. Shabani investigates the materials and quantum states that could underpin future devices. Shahrjerdi develops the fabrication approaches needed to turn new materials into hardware. Almanakly studies how quantum hardware can communicate and function as part of a larger system.

The work rarely proceeds in a straight line, and requires a lot of time, energy and space applied to it.

Quantum science requires equipment that is expensive, specialized and often inaccessible outside major national laboratories, universities or technology companies. Cleanrooms, cryogenic systems, high-precision deposition tools and sophisticated measurement platforms can all become barriers between an idea and a working prototype. NYU’s strategy is to lower those barriers while concentrating expertise in one ecosystem.

For New York City, that effort also has implications beyond the university. The city has major concentrations of finance, telecommunications, health care, technology companies and venture investment, all of which could eventually become users, partners or investors in quantum technologies. New York State also has a well-developed semiconductor ecosystem that includes chip fabrication, research centers and advanced manufacturing expertise. QFab is intended to connect academic research with that broader landscape.

For faculty, it will provide space to test unconventional ideas. For startups, it could reduce the cost and complexity of developing first-generation devices. For students, it will provide hands-on experience with the equipment and processes used in quantum hardware. For industry, it could create a place to collaborate directly with researchers working at the frontier of the field.

The timing is important because quantum technology remains unsettled. There is still no consensus about which qubit technology will ultimately prove most scalable. Superconducting circuits, trapped ions, neutral atoms, semiconductor spins, photonic systems and topological approaches all have active research communities. Different technologies may ultimately serve different purposes.

The same uncertainty surrounds applications. Quantum computing attracts the most attention, but quantum sensing and communication may mature along different timelines and find their own commercial uses. That uncertainty favors institutions capable of supporting multiple approaches rather than betting everything on a single platform.

Q&A with Javad Shabani on the Vision for the NYU Quantum Institute

The newly launched NYU Quantum Institute (NYUQI) aims to position New York University at the forefront of a rapidly evolving technological frontier. We spoke with Javad Shabani, a leading experimental physicist and one of the key figures behind the initiative, about what makes the institute distinctive, how it connects disciplines, and what quantum technologies could mean for society in the near future.

A man standing in front of a machine in a laboratory.

Javad Shabani.

Q: The NYU Quantum Institute is being described as an integrated and interdisciplinary effort. What does that actually look like in practice?

Shabani: Quantum is inherently interdisciplinary. You can’t make progress by staying in one lane. You need people who understand materials at the atomic level, engineers who can fabricate devices, computer scientists who design algorithms, and domain experts who know what real-world problems need solving.

The idea behind NYUQI is to bring all of that together under one umbrella. Instead of researchers working in silos, we create a structured environment where collaboration is constant and intentional. Someone working on quantum hardware can directly interact with someone developing algorithms, or with a biologist who needs a new sensing tool. That’s how meaningful breakthroughs happen.

That kind of integration is especially important in quantum science right now because the field is moving incredibly fast, and we don’t yet have fully mature systems. Today’s quantum computers, for example, aren’t powerful enough to just plug in any problem and get an answer. So researchers have to co-design everything — the hardware, the algorithms, even the problems themselves.

That means the boundaries between disciplines are much more fluid. You might redesign a quantum processor to better suit a specific algorithm, or adjust the algorithm to match the capabilities of the device. Without close collaboration, that kind of iteration just doesn’t happen efficiently.

Q: You’ve mentioned that quantum research today requires a “full-stack” approach. What do you mean by that?

Shabani: Think of it like building a modern technology ecosystem from the ground up. At the base level, you have materials — how do you create stable qubits? Then you have devices — how do you turn those materials into functioning systems? Then comes the software and algorithms. And finally, the applications — drug discovery, finance, communications.

No single person can master all of that. So you need an institution that connects those layers. NYUQI is designed to be that connective tissue, ensuring that discoveries at one level can quickly inform progress at another.