Centers and Initiatives

The Berggren Center for Quantum Biology and Medicine, co-directed by Prof. Greg Engel, is housed within the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and draws on the University’s renowned strengths in quantum science, biomedical research and clinical care. The center is focused on a bold scientific field that merges quantum technology with biology to transform the future of medicine.

The Chicago Immunoengineering Innovation Center (CIIC), directed by Prof. Melody Swartz, uses engineering principles to uncover new insights on the immune system and innovate solutions addressing immunological problems in health and disease. The CIIC unifies clinicians, immunologists, and bioengineers to create tools & technologies aimed at unmet needs in immune science and practice. They are committed to original and collaborative inquiry, but also to accelerating the development of discoveries into real-world solutions.

The Scientists, Technologists and Artists Generating Exploration (STAGE) Center, founded and directed by Prof. Nancy Kawalek, is a full-scale laboratory embedded within the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, focused on creating and developing new theatre, film, games, and other artistic endeavors inspired by science and technology.

Gaining a deeper understanding of what takes place when water — and matter dissolved or suspended in water — comes into contact with those solids is the focus of the Argonne-led Advanced Materials for Energy-Water Systems (AMEWS) Center, an Energy Frontier Research Center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. Prof. Giulia Galli serves as the Deputy Director for Strategy.

As a global leader in energy storage research, Argonne’s cutting-edge science enables a more resilient grid, low-cost innovations in transportation and national security, longer-lasting electronic devices, and American energy leadership. 

Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science (ACCESS), for which Prof. Shirley Meng serves as chief scientist, leverages multidisciplinary teams, world-class facilities, and powerful scientific tools to help public- and private-sector partners turn science into solutions.

The Catalyst Design for Decarbonization Center (CD4DC), directed by Prof. Laura Gagliardi, is an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the United States Department of Energy. The central research mission of CD4DC is to discover new catalysts for the decarbonization energy transition and to optimize the key catalytic reactions involved.

CECAM (Centre Européen de Calcul Atomique et Moléculaire) is an organization of institutions with a mission of promoting fundamental research on advanced computational methods and their application to important problems in frontier areas of science and technology.

CECAM-US-CENTRAL, directed by Prof. Andrew Ferguson, was established at the University of Chicago on November 16, 2023 as the first CECAM node in the United States, in partnership with Northwestern University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Notre Dame, Purdue University, and Argonne National Laboratory. 

The University of Chicago’s Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth launched the Center for Advanced Materials for Environmental Solutions (CAMES) with Prof. Laura Gagliardi as the founding faculty director. CAMES is a multidisciplinary research center dedicated to developing innovative materials that can significantly reduce the impact of climate change.

The Center for Living Systems (CLS) at the University of Chicago, directed by Prof. Margaret Gardel, is a National Science Foundation Physics Frontier Center. The CLS brings together 17 faculty to build shared frameworks and approaches to expand knowledge of living systems. We develop education and outreach programs for the research community and public.

The Chicago Quantum Exchange (CQE), directed by Prof. David Awschalom, is an intellectual hub in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana that advances the science and engineering of quantum information, prepares the quantum workforce, and drives the quantum economy in collaboration with leading universities, national labs, and industry partners. The recipient of millions of dollars in government and corporate investment and home to some of the world’s top experts in the field, the CQE community is a central driver of US leadership in quantum technologies.

The multi-institutional Enabling Practical-scale Quantum Computing (EPiQC) Expedition helps bring the great potential of quantum computing into reality by reducing the current gap between existing theoretical algorithms and practical quantum computing architectures.

The Energy Storage Research Alliance (ESRA) is one of two Energy Innovation Hubs created by the U.S. Department of Energy. Led by Energy Technologies Initiative Director and Prof. Shirley Meng and spearheaded by the Argonne National Laboratory, ESRA unites top researchers from two other national labs and 12 universities to address pressing battery challenges such as safety, high-energy density and long-duration batteries made from inexpensive, abundant materials. The achievement of ESRA’s goals will lead to high-energy batteries that never catch fire, offer days of long-duration storage, have multiple decades of life and are made from inexpensive, abundant materials.

The Energy Technologies Initiative (ETI), led by Prof. Shirley Meng, is one of the pillars of the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth, which, among its efforts, is driving major advancements in energy storage technologies widely regarded as a holy grail of the energy transition. The Initiative originates at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) as part of its ongoing work in energy and sustainability. The Energy Transition Network (ETN) is a program of ETI which dedicated to the safe, quick and cost-effective transition off fossil fuels around the globe through a collaborative approach.

The Hybrid Quantum Architectures and Networks (HQAN), co-led by University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering researchers, features three quantum testbeds that will collaboratively develop the technology needed to assemble a hybrid quantum processor and network. Each laboratory is designed with multiple kinds of quantum hardware, which will be used to demonstrate distributed quantum processing and communication protocols.

The Midwest Integrated Center for Computational Materials (MICCoM), directed by Prof. Giulia Galli, develops and disseminates interoperable open source software, data and validation procedures, enabling the community to predict properties of functional materials. The distinctive features of the center are:

• Development of interoperable codes for simulation of materials at multiple length and time scales
• Focus on heterogeneous materials, inclusive of defects, interfaces and building blocks assembled out of equilibrium
• Focus on spectroscopic and transport properties

The NSF Center for Multimodal Observations for Single Atom Imaging of Chemistry (MOSAIC) is led by UChicago President and Prof. Paul Alivisatos. The core mission of MOSAIC is to visualize chemical reactions in real-time at the single-atom level, an unprecedented feat that will empower scientists to unlock the secrets of reaction mechanisms. This groundbreaking capability is poised to drive advancements in fields ranging from catalysis and energy storage to chemical manufacturing.

The University of Chicago Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC), directed by Prof. Stuart Rowan, drives innovation by tackling some of the deepest intellectual challenges of materials research through interdisciplinary and highly collaborative efforts united with a strong commitment to education and outreach. The MRSEC offers, in addition to its intellectual talent, a range of facilities for making, characterizing, measuring, and imaging many types of materials and samples. Most facilities are headed by professional, PhD-level technical staff who maintain and improve the equipment, perform measurements, prepare samples, and train researchers.

The mission of the NSF Great Lakes RENEW Engine (Recovery of Energy, Nutrients, critical Elements, and Water), for which Prof. Junhong Chen serves as co-Principal Investigator and Use-Inspired R&D Lead, is to catalyze the circular blue economy in the Great Lakes region by recovering critical resources and eliminating harmful contaminants from water— securing domestic supply chains, sustaining water-intensive industry, and safeguarding vital national security assets.

Biology and quantum science are convergent fields. The NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Quantum Sensing for Biophysics and Bioengineering (NSF QuBBE), directed by Prof. Greg Engel, aims to dramatically accelerate this convergence by driving use-inspired development of quantum sensing modalities and novel correlative imaging approaches.

Q-NEXT, for which Prof. David Awschalom serves as Chief Science Officer and Prof. Supratik Guha serves as Chief Technology Officer, brings together the world’s leading minds from the national laboratories, universities and technology companies to solve cutting-edge challenges in quantum information science. Led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, Q-NEXT focuses on how to reliably control, store and transmit quantum information at distances that could be as small as the width of a computer chip or as large as the distance between Chicago and San Francisco.

Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center (SQMS) is a Department of Energy-funded center headquartered at Fermilab, managed by the University of Chicago. SQMS is focused on building and deploying a beyond-state-of-the-art quantum computer based on superconducting technologies.