WATERLOO – The science of the incredibly small – from atoms to photons of the nano-scale world – took a giant leap forward today with the opening of the Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre. Stephen Hawking, the famous British theoretical physicist is among the luminaries expected to be in attendance at the ribbon-cutting.
Mike Lazaridis, whose BlackBerry smartphone redefined the way people send e-mail, donated $100 million to create the research centre which he predicts will make discoveries on par of those from AT&T Inc.’s Bell Labs of a half-century ago.
“Just as the discoveries and innovations at The Bell Labs led to the companies that created Silicon Valley, so will, I predict, the discoveries and innovations of the Quantum-Nano Centre lead to the creation of companies that will lead to Waterloo Region becoming known as the Quantum Valley,” said Lazaridis.
He says research at the Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre will lead to transformative technologies, such as ultra-powerful quantum computers, innovative quantum devices and nanotechnologies with applications that will benefit society in countless ways.
The $160 million state-of-the-art facility located in the heart of the University of Waterloo is designed to foster cross-disciplinary collaboration between researchers. It houses the Institute for Quantum Computing, the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology and the Nanotechnology Engineering program.
At the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, researchers are asseambling tiny nanoelectronic components, atom by atom, and growing nanowires with diameters 100,000 times smaller than a human hair.
The centre was built with the help of a $25-million grant from the federal government.
