AtomQ is building quantum technologies using a new manufacturing platform
What if you could reprogram a material at the atomic level by moving individual atoms around? It sounds like something far off in the future, but Kevin Roccapriore said the capability is within reach.
This method, Roccapriore said, can hypothetically create another route for engineering qubits, which are the building blocks of quantum.
It’s been nearly two years since we sat down with Roccapriore to talk about his startup, AtomQ. He is building quantum technologies using a new manufacturing platform. The research started during his time on staff at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and has since grown into a potentially promising approach to manufacturing qubits.
Thankfully, due to existing pathways within ORNL, Roccapriore was able to take an “entrepreneurial leave” and join the Department of Energy’s Lab Embedded Entrepreneurship Program (LEEP) Innovation Crossroads.
Q: Why decide to start a business?
During my time at ORNL, there were several technologies that kept coming up – deep research projects that I was engaged in. It was always in the back of my mind: how does this ever get to the real world? The technology I’m working on now, I really wanted to push it commercially beyond the national lab system. I think what we’re building is very commercially relevant.
Q: You’ve leveraged some of the existing support networks in Knoxville; which programs have you found the most valuable to advancing AtomQ?
Spark, particularly, was a really valuable learning experience. I had been out of normal schooling for seven years and to get back into it, this time with a focus on business was a big change. I felt like it was an MBA crash-course. Also, the mentors were super helpful in helping me identify customers and learn how to communicate our technology.
Q: How does AtomQ’s process differ from the traditional method of making qubits?
The quantum industry has a lot of different ways on how you make a qubit. There’s different qubit types – atomically speaking, they can be large or small. But, one of the biggest issues at this atomic scale is that these qubits are not identical to one another. Precision at the atomic level is challenging, and that’s one of the things traditonal methods lack. We believe identical qubits are necessary to make industries like quantum computing and quantum sensing work, and our technology may be able to control those variables at the atomic scale.
Q: Quantum has been a hot topic this year. How has broader industry knowledge helped you communicate your company?
Everybody knows about quantum now – in some ways, it’s like the new AI. It’s made it a bit easier for me to communicate because we can pass the first hurdle of: what’s quantum? Two years ago, quantum was an obscure thing. Today, it’s growing quickly. There’s a lot of big and strong players who are really pushing hard, and I’ve felt the trickle down effects of that when sharing about my company.
Q: What are some of your biggest successes in the past two years?
I’ll start with the academic progress, which is in the form of a publication. The idea was to establish this technology as something real, something scalable that has real-world applications. In May, we finally had our Nature article published about this topic, which has given some credibility and legitimacy to our claims. The work on this article started back when I was at Oak Ridge, so it’s great to see it finally come to fruition two years later.
Q: What keeps you motivated?
One of the original motivations for doing this in the first place is to really push the science that I want to do. I want to keep doing this. And we’ve only really just realized that it’s even possible to do this at scales that are relevant.
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