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This story is sponsored by Northwestern University’s Institute for Quantum Information Research and Engineering.
Many of Chicago’s economic development, intellectual, and industry conversations orbit quantum science these days. Capturing that enthusiasm – and reinforcing its scientific foundation – Northwestern University and the University of Chicago convened October’s QBI2 workshop.
QBI2 (Quantum Effects at the Biology and Innovation Interface) showcased the ways in which proteins can be engineered to serve as the basis for novel quantum computers and for new sensors and biological devices based on quantum effects.
About 200 cross-disciplinary researchers from around the world gathered to discuss the latest approaches to imaging and computing using proteins as sensors and qubits. Biohub hosted the workshop in downtown Chicago. Northwestern’s Professor Shana Kelley heads Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago, and Aleksandra Baranczak, Biohub’s vice president of strategy and partnerships, brought the workshop there.
Chicago and the surrounding area “have been very much at the forefront of the quantum revolution,” said Professor Songi Han, a member of Northwestern’s Department of Chemistry and its Institute for Quantum Information Research and Engineering. Han co-organized the workshop with the University of Chicago’s Professor Peter Maurer. Maurer is a member of UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and a member of the Berggren Center for Quantum Biology and Medicine.
“We are excited about the enthusiasm and entrepreneurial energy around this topic. However, as scientists, we believe in proof of work. We have to deliver. We have to rally around solutions and techniques in biology, biomedicine, and biophysics that have tangible benefits,” Han said.
“Northwestern really has all the ingredients to be at the interface of biology, physics, chemistry, medicine, and biomedical engineering, because we are the one institution, I would argue, that has the most extensive multidisciplinary faculty and shared facilities. There's almost no instrument or expertise that you cannot find at Northwestern.”
“Recently, Professor Julius Lucks and Professor Danielle Tullman-Ercek, who co-direct Northwestern’s Center for Synthetic Biology, received $20 million from the NSF to build DREAM, an AI-directed protein-engineering cloud lab. Dr. Subha Chaudhuri directs the Quantum Biosciences Consortium, QBiCon, which advances quantum biology through physics- and AI-driven models that uncover the fundamental principles of living systems. His own work is the quantum chemistry of spin and charge transfer in LOV photoreceptors. Our regional ties – including to the national labs – enhance that.”
The first day of the conference featured recent breakthroughs in encoding spin qubits in fluorescent proteins, modulating their behavior, and reading their outputs, each a necessary feature of any quantum computer. Participants also explored using generative AI to model protein function, multiplexing protein-based switches, and increasing the complexity of the environments in which protein qubits function. The University of Chicago’s Professor David Awschalom keynoted the conference. His team, with workshop organizer Peter Maurer’s team, demonstrated the first protein-based qubit in 2025 with a publication in Nature.
Day two focused on engineering proteins to serve as sensors and other devices. Speakers highlighted the existing natural mechanisms, like responses to magnetic fields and other stimuli, that influence proteins’ behavior. Leveraging those behaviors offers a promising and broad avenue for creating devices and techniques that could ultimately improve, for example, medical diagnosis and human health.
Professor Kevin Gardner of The City University of New York described light-oxygen-voltage receptors exploited in quantum-based sensing and control. Gardner is a pioneer in the field, having helped develop EL222, a naturally occurring bacterial protein that can activate genes using light. The photosensitive protein has been used to control gene expression in specific cells, produce monoclonal antibodies, and control CRISPR gene editing, among other applications.
“Nature’s lazy. And she’s figured out some really cool signaling mechanisms and riffs on them again and again,” Gardner said. Not every capability has to be built from scratch. Some can be readily adapted to other valuable purposes.
A postdoc on Songi Han’s team, Joshua Straub, described such a case. Contemporary gene therapies often require an external light source to activate them, which can mean awkward equipment or invasive fiber-optic devices implanted via surgery. But what if the chemical reaction that drives that change could be induced in another way?
Straub described work by the team that showed external magnetic fields, like those generated by MRI machines, could increase the activation rate of a chemical bond between two types of molecules in a common, engineered LOV receptor. Increasing that activation rate can cause the protein to change shape and signalling behavior. In other words, light isn’t always required. A different quantum effect, magnetic resonance, can be used instead.
But, as another researcher pointed out, magnetic stimulation of a protein doesn’t necessarily eliminate the need for light in an optogenetic system. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory’s Shaun Burd described an experiment in which his team built fusion proteins that combined genes from bioluminescent proteins and magnetically sensitive proteins. The result was a new protein that needs light to function but can be induced to produce its own. This approach opens the door to future biological actuators that can be switched on and operate thanks to engineered quantum effects.
Professor Dominick Bucher of the Technical University of Munich, meanwhile, discussed magnetically sensitive molecular probes. Based on work underway in his lab, they could someday be used in more precise genetic testing.
A panel concluded the QBI2 workshop, featuring the Illinois Economic Development Corporation, venture capital, university research, and startups. While computing, sensing, and biotech applications based on quantum effects are still developing, the group saw vast potential for Chicago, Northwestern University, and partners throughout the state.
From a business perspective, “we are somewhere like in the early ‘50s, where the early semiconductor industry was really about providing the material…to labs and companies working with the material,” said Claudio Flores, the CEO of Mimotype Technologies, a German quantum biology company that manufactures optically active proteins for optoelectronics and biosensors. He predicted early quantum-enabled protein technologies might appear outside of living cells and instead include biohybrids for wound dressings or transient electronics.
Whatever the applications, and whenever they hit, Illinois and Northwestern are ready.
Preeti Chalsani, Chief Quantum Officer at the Illinois Economic Development Corporation, said that Illinois is dedicated to avoiding a familiar story in which technologies generated in the state by its university researchers end up being developed into companies and economic windfalls for other states.
“There’s a deep-rooted desire to change that narrative,” Chalsani said. Illinois is investing aggressively in quantum technology, and “we’ve created policies and incentives to support everything from R&D and labs to a spin-out venture fund to supply-chain and workforce initiatives.”
Northwestern’s Han closed the workshop by reinforcing that opportunity for all participants: “At the end of the day, we need people obsessing over whatever it is that you're interested in. It could be molecular biology, it could be instrumentation, it could be the last bit of digital sensitivity you want out.”
“There is excitement. Let’s make the investments count.”
QBI2’s presenting sponsors were Northwestern University’s Institute for Quantum Information Research and Engineering (INQUIRE), University of Chicago’s Berggren Center for Quantum Biology and Medicine, National Science Foundation Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Quantum Sensing for Biophysics and Bioengineering, Northwestern’s Department of Chemistry, Mimotype, and Biohub. Industry partners included the Chicago Quantum Exchange, Qblox, Keysight, High Q Technologies, Bruker, Novo Holdings, and Tabor Electronics. The Quantum Biosciences Consortium and ACERT were organizing partners.
This story is sponsored by Northwestern University’s Institute for Quantum Information Research and Engineering.
