Could New Haven be the next Silicon Valley?

WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s P.R. Lockhart to discuss her article, “The state is pouring millions into the emerging quantum industry in the hopes of unlocking new economic growth — and becoming a global leader,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read P.R.’s story here.

WSHU: Hello, P.R. Last November, Connecticut’s economic development director, Dan O’Keefe, announced with fanfare that the state is investing $121 million in a regional effort to develop quantum computing. Is that what prompted you to investigate this? By the way, what is quantum computing?

PRL: Yeah, so I’ll start with what quantum computing is first, and then we’ll handle, you know, kind of how I got into reporting. So I am not a physicist by trade; I’m going to give it probably a very basic explanation, but from what I’ve been told, quantum computing is really using the ability of quantum mechanics and quantum physics to really enhance how calculations get done, so if this technology is fully realized, in theory, computing power goes up tremendously for certain types of applications.

WSHU: Now, Yale University is involved with this in what way?

PRL: A couple of ways. Looking at quantum as a field, Yale has been at the forefront of research in quantum science and technology for decades. Last year, the Nobel Prize in physics actually went to a Yale professor. He was part of a team that had made some foundational breakthroughs in quantum physics and quantum knowledge. Yale has a quantum institute that has been around for about 12 years. It was one of the first of its kind in the country. They’ve made a lot of big developments in quantum, but as far as what I’m writing about in this recent story, I focus on Yale as being a part of this thing called Quantum CT, which is a nonprofit collaboration between Yale, the University of Connecticut, and the state, and together they’re trying to, you know, turn quantum from all of this research that Yale has been leading in into an actual commercial sector that can then drive economic growth in the state.

WSHU: So the $121 million. How was that invested?

PRL: What has happened to this point is there was a million dollars that was given out early to kind of help support some of the foundational, you know, building of this network that is going on in the state right now. There was $10 million dedicated to Quantum CT through the Department of Economic and Community Development’s Innovation Clusters program, and that’s a program that’s seeding a larger set of efforts in New Haven. Of that larger set, $10 million is going to go straight to Quantum CT for this ecosystem building. Then there’s $50 million that the state has already dedicated to Quantum CT that they can now access to help build out, you know, some infrastructure they’re doing in New Haven and some other projects they’re working on. So, together that’s $61 million. So I just explained half of the money; the other half, the other $60 million, that only gets given to Quantum CT if the organization wins a federal competition it’s currently involved in.

WSHU: Now, how do they, how do they get that federal investment? How do they qualify for it? How do they win the competition?

PRL: Yeah, so what the state is, what Quantum CT is competing in right now is a thing called the National Science Foundation’s Regional Innovation Engines Competition. The competition is meant to basically increase economic development projects based on science and technology, and it’s meant to increase these efforts in parts of the country that don’t traditionally, you know, have these sorts of economic technology-based efforts. That competition opened in 2024. We’ve been competing in it for a minute. Quantum CT is actually now a finalist in the competition, so it’s now one of 15 projects eligible for federal funding.

WSHU: Now, what’s Quantum CT doing to try and get minority communities involved in this? Because very often with high tech, minority communities are left behind.

PRL: You know, that’s something I myself walk into this reporting process asking, and that’s something I’m really interested in, kind of pulling apart about this moving forward. So far Quantum CT has done a couple of things they’ve told me about, they’ve launched a community impact pilot, and that pilot was really partnering with nonprofits in different parts of the state to kind of start building that sort of education infrastructure and that sort of talent pipeline for quantum right now, so in my story I write about two different initiatives, one with a New Haven and Stanford-based nonprofit called dae, and what dae is doing is they’re launching a curriculum, it’s going to be one of the first curriculum programs for high school in the country, and they’re going to be able to learn hands on how quantum computing works, interact with the technology, and by the time this full curriculum program launches, they’ll actually be able to start getting college level experience with some of this science.

The other program is being done by Ready CT, which is the Workforce Development Program in the state, and they actually are developing a pilot curriculum that they’re launching in high schools, and that’s less technical than dae’s. It’s more of just increasing familiarity with quantum and explaining what it is to people while they’re still in school, but that program’s also kind of happening. I’ve been told there’s other initiatives too, like the organization, like Quantum CT, is working with an organization in New Haven to do some work around quantum workforce development in Black communities, but there all of this is still very much new, and I think that’s a kind of a question to ask them at every stage of their process moving forward, is what is being done to make sure that you’re constantly catching as many people as possible in this, so that the state money benefits as many residents as possible.

WSHU: So, P.R., the bottom line here is the possibility of a Silicon Valley developing around New Haven. Is that something that we can see happening right now?

PRL: I think we definitely are seeing the beginnings of something that could be promising, and I think if the state executes everything well, this could hopefully pay off.