Colorado Quantum Incubator emerging as hub for community and innovation
The incubator is building a vibrant community with a roster of engaging events and leading industry tenants including newest member, OEwaves
Pitch coaching event for the Lab Venture Challenge
L-R: Kristan Corwin, Fateme Mahdikhany and Jennifer Black speak at a community event
The Colorado Quantum Incubator (COQI)—a Boulder-led hub for advancing quantum lab-to-market technology translation—is cultivatinga thriving community with astate-of-the-art facility, resident companies and timely programming.
COQI brings together quantum startups, technologists, researchers and industry partners with shared office space andlab platforms and instrumentation suites, a setup that enables collaboration on strategic decision-making, technology development and business operations.
COQI is a unique and in-demand entity at a key moment for applying quantum science, according to Tanya Ramond (PhD in quantum physics, Boulder), who currently leads the incubator’s business development efforts. “Until relatively recently, the community for quantum has been within academia and national labs. It’s only with the beginnings of commercializing quantum that there’s been a need to bring this out of those settings,” she said. “That’s part of why I’m so excited about COQI, to really have a place to build this community.”
Establishing a collective ethos is a high priority for COQI, said Ramond, because the quantum realm can often feel isolated. “Especially for quantum, there's big power that comes from someone coming to a space and feeling like they belong,” she said. That’s taking shape, in part, through knowledge sharing among tenants. “COQI is a place where people can come together and learn from fellow startups, whether it’s on the topic area they're working on, or how to attack a particular problem,” said Ramond. “That’s really an important network to build.”
A forum for quantum innovators
Ramond and colleagues have been ramping up public engagement opportunities in recent months. COQI launched their official events calendar last month with “Quantum After Hours,” a networking event bringing together dozens of industry innovators. The incubator also recently hosted a “Women in Quantum” forum with industry leaders who shared their stories. Past and future events include “Colorado Quantum Meet Ups” and a monthly speaker series illuminating some of the most pressing questions and relevant advancements in quantum science. COQI has also hosted state and global delegations.
Providing a forum for quantum innovators to interact, ask questions and swap ideas is also important because the field is multifaceted, said Ramond. “Quantum is really broad, there’s a lot of different specialities and niches, so we want to help everyone understand what others are doing and why it’s important,” she said.
OEwaves joins the community
COQI, a13,000-square-foot facility locatedat BioMed Realty’s Flatiron Park, was launched earlier this year to bridge the gap between world-class laboratory research and market-ready innovations.
The incubator is fast becoming a fulcrum for an industry that promises to transform how societies communicate, compute and solve problems once thought unsolvable. COQI’s list of new and prospective tenants is varied and growing, according to Scott Sternberg,bit Quantum Initiative executive director and COQI project lead.
“The interest has been overwhelming. It’s a door that people have beaten a path to, wanting these conversations, wanting to understand what we’re really building here,” he said. “The real benefit is that we’re at the center of the conversation. This is part of our innovation strategy—creating a nexus for quantum conversation, quantum talent development and quantum business development.”
COQI recently welcomed its newest tenant, OEwaves, Inc., whichdevelops complete laser suites for quantum technology.Soon after COQI opened its doors, Orri Jonsson, OEwaves’ director of sales, realized that’s where he wanted to be. “Here's where I need to be … around people that are working on the cool things that the quantum world is working on,” he said.
Jonsson has appreciated COQI’s multifaceted programming, looking at various aspects of quantum, and the relationships he’s forged among other tenants and pathmakers in the quantum realm.“I had more interesting conversations here in the first week than I did in the last year in the other [coworking] places,” he said. “So that was very, very good.”
OEwaves
OEwaves spun out of the quantum technologies group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2000 to provide extremely low noise lasers and photonically based radio frequency (RF) devices to accelerate commercialization of quantum technologies and solve noise challenges in quantum technologies, precision measurements, and high-speed data transmission. North American sales at OEwaves are based in Colorado to better support the incredible institutions and companies that are accelerating quantum technologies to positively impact people’s lives.
the Colorado Quantum Incubator
The Colorado Quantum Incubator (COQI) was created through collaboration among partner universities and Elevate Quantum. Its purpose is to support quantum startups, provide access to advanced scientific equipment and serve as a testbed for quantum innovations. COQI aims to accelerate research into real-world applications, foster economic development, create quantum-related jobs and position Colorado as a global leader in quantum technology.
Interested in being part of the quantum incubator? Reach out tocubit@colorado.edu.