Google AI recently announced that JQI Fellow Vlad Manucharyan is among the recipients for this year's Google Faculty Research Awards. The program supports technical research in areas such as machine learning and quantum computing, the latter of which is Manucharyan's area of specialty. In the 2018 awards cycle the program funded 158 of the 910 proposed projects. 

Manucharyan, who is also the Alford Ward Professor of Physics at UMD, is a leading condensed matter experimentalist who uses superconducting circuits to make quantum bits, which underlie one type of quantum computer. This type of research is also an active area of development for Google AI. Beyond qubits, Manucharyan’s team is also exploring ways in which superconducting circuits can probe physics phenomena that remain out of reach for other quantum platforms.