Four SUNY Polytechnic Institute professors this summer are exploring topics as part of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Information Directorate’s Visiting Faculty Research Program and Summer Faculty Fellowship Program, said SUNY Poly.

The research at the Air Force site, also known as Rome Lab, includes topics from quantum information and theory to blockchain-based information dissemination, the college said.

In another quantum-related activity involving the lab and SUNY Poly, a Quantum Information Science 1st International Workshop was held this week at the college’s Marcy campus.

Among details:

• For the summer research programs at the lab, participating SUNY Poly faculty include Carlo Cafaro, lecturer in Applied Mathematics; Emilio Cobanera, assistant professor of Physics; Michael Reale, an assistant professor in the​ College of Engineering’s Computer Science Department; Ali Tekeoglu, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering’s Network and Computer Security Department. Cafaro is based at SUNY Poly’s Albany campus, and the others are from the Marcy campus.

SUNY Poly had announced last month that two other educators had been awarded $900,000 from the Rome AFRL for research on brain-inspired computing systems comprised of quantum devices operating at cryogenic temperatures below -450 degrees; that research is at SUNY Poly’s Albany campus.

Quantum computing can be up to 100 million times faster than the speed at which an average computer chip operates today according to recent announcements, said SUNY Poly.

Cafaro, whose research involves quantification of speed and efficiency for quantum search algorithms, said “quantum computers can, in principle, solve scientific and engineering problems much faster than the computers we are using right now by taking advantage of the laws of physics that rule atoms and elementary particles.” He added “the same laws of quantum physics that would make a quantum computer dramatically faster also make it very hard to build practical quantum memories.”

Along similar lines of research, Cobanera is working to find new materials that could yield practical, reliable quantum memories, SUNY Poly said.

The faculty research and summer faculty fellowship programs began in May and run through mid-August.

• For the Quantum Information workshop held this week, Rome Lab and SUNY Poly partnered to host the event in which government researchers, industry leaders, and academics from around the world discussed progress in the field and throughout the Mohawk Valley.

The three-day workshop focused on “key areas within the evolving field, including timing, sensing, communications, networking, and computing,” said SUNY Poly.