IBM recognizes SU physicist for excellence in research

Britton L.T. Plourde, associate professor of physics in Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences, received a 2011 IBM Faculty Award. The highly competitive and prestigious award is presented annually to recognize high-quality research programs and researchers’ contributions to their respective fields and comes with a cash grant of $34,000. The Faculty Award program fosters collaboration between researchers at leading universities worldwide and IBM, and promotes curriculum innovation to stimulate growth in disciplines and geographies that are strategic to IBM.

Plourde is a collaborator with IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, N.Y., on a project to expand research in the area of quantum computing. Plourde’s role in the project is to explore the fabrication of nanoscale superconducting circuits. Led by IBM, the collaboration includes Raytheon BBN Technologies in Cambridge, Mass.; Princeton University; and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The federal Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA) is providing major funding for the research.

Over the past three years, Plourde has received more than $2.2 million from federal agencies to further his research into building nanoscale superconducting circuits that may someday form the basis of quantum computers. The funding includes grants from IARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The IARPA and DARPA grants were part of larger awards to Plourde’s research associates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Saarland University, Germany; the University of California, Irvine; and IBM.