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Chattanooga, TN
Dr. Rick Mukherjee has been appointed as the inaugural director of the UTC Quantum Center by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He was selected for the post in mid-2024 and assumed the role on Dec. 1. Mukherjee’s arrival is the latest milestone towards creating a UTC program of excellence in Quantum Information Science and Engineering (QISE). The Quantum Center is an entity within the UTC Research Institute.
With $3.5 million in funding from NIST, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the UTC Quantum Center will focus on four areas of activity: infrastructure; education and outreach; use of case-driven research and development; and business development to ensure the Center’s sustainability.
“I am deeply impressed by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s commitment to advancing quantum research, which stands as a testament to the University’s foresight and dedication to shaping the future of technology,” Mukherjee said. “In addition, EPB’s bold involvement into quantum networks further encapsulates the city’s spirit to embrace this bright future.”
“Accepting the position of director of the UTC Quantum Center is not only a tremendous honor, it’s a unique opportunity to contribute to this exciting vision,” proudly announced Dr. Mukherjee.
Mukherjee was at his most recent post, in Hamburg, Germany, since April 2022. Prior to that, he was a research associate from 2018 to 2022 at Imperial College London, a global top 10 university in science, engineering, business and medicine.
After serving as a visiting scientist at the Harvard Institute for Theoretical Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics in summer 2017, Mukherjee held the post of visiting scholar at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Bhopal from 2017 to 2018. He completed a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship at Rice University in Houston in 2017.
“The focus on quantum information science and engineering is a new direction for UTC,” said UTC Vice Chancellor for Research Reinhold Mann. “The Quantum Center represents important opportunities for our students, the community and UTC research collaborations with other institutions.”
Mukherjee earned a doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany. He completed two master’s degrees. One is in theoretical and mathematical physics from the University of Cambridge in England; and the other is in astrophysics from Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from St. Xavier’s University in Mumbai, India.
In 2023, UTC became the first U.S. university to host a permanent connection to a commercially available quantum network—the nation’s first, created by EPB—and became a founding member of the Chattanooga Quantum Collaborative. EPB is Chattanooga’s city-owned electric utility and communications company.
