Assistant Professor Yuval Shagam  from the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry is a member of the Helen Diller Quantum Center. He focuses on understanding molecular chirality: a molecule or ion that cannot be superposed on its mirror image. Such molecules are often distinguished as either “right-handed” or “left-handed.” Molecular chirality plays a central role in many fields, ranging from reaction dynamics to drug development. Molecules of opposite-handedness, known as enantiomers, can have different smells and different medicinal properties among other things.

Prof. Ido Kaminer of the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering won an ERC Consolidator grant from the European Research Council.ERC Consolidator grants support select scientists who propose pioneering, ground-breaking research ideas. The grant will be used by Prof. Kaminer’s research team to develop a theory and innovative experimental platform for a new field in electron microscopy: Q-in-PINEM. The research will focus on creating new quantum states and identifying unique quantum properties for materials.

Quantum computers able to perform complicated lightning-speed computations and quantum communication that can transfer quantum information across the world without it getting lost or being eavesdropped on, are hot buzzwords of our imagined future. Scientists from the Department of Physics and the Solid State Institute at the Technion – Israeli Institute of Technology bring that future one step closer to fruition.

Researchers from the Technion have pushed the limits of the possible in the field of atomic-scale spin-optics, creating a spin-optical laser from monolayer-integrated spin-valley microcavities without requiring magnetic fields or cryogenic temperatures