The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded an NWO Veni Grant to Filip Malinowski. The grant (250 thousand euros for a three-year program) will allow him to use a new kind of sensor to further uncover the properties of so-called topological materials, which are promising materials for developing robust quantum devices.

Quantum information is very fragile and easily lost, which is one of the main problems for performing large quantum computations. A certain type of material, called topological materials, could offer a solution: these materials are a promising platform for constructing extremely robust quantum bits, the building blocks of quantum devices. However, studying the properties of these topological materials is notoriously hard.

Filip Malinowski, a postdoctoral researcher at the Kouwenhoven lab, applied for the NWO Veni Grant to take on the challenge of further uncovering the properties of topological materials. He aims to do this by using a new kind of sensor. Malinowski: “I hope to combine the ideas of two research fields that are followed in QuTech: to manipulate electrons as is done in our spin qubit research, but instead use them as a new kind of sensor to learn about properties of topological materials. In this way, I aim to bring new tools that are essential for topological quantum computing.”

Using this new kind of sensor for studying topological materials is a completely new approach. “Taking an electron spin that you can manipulate and bringing it into direct contact with a system that you want to understand better is quite a new idea,” Malinowski explains. “Before I came to QuTech, I’ve introduced and tested the sensor in a different material, but it’s a completely new approach in the topological material research. The research area of topological materials is very hot and we are excited about the new insights that we’ll acquire through this NWO Veni Grant.”

Out of 1127 proposals, Filip Malinowski is one of the 161 researchers who got awarded the Veni Grant. It’s aimed specifically at excellent researchers who have recently obtained their PhD. Read more on the website of NWO.