Harvard will launch a Ph.D. program in Quantum Science and Engineering, which it said would be âone of the worldâs first,â according to a Monday morning announcement.
The new discipline, which will admit its first cohort of 35 to 40 graduate students in fall 2022, who work at the intersection of physics, chemistry, computer science, and electrical engineering.
While Harvard already has a quantum science and engineering research community through the Harvard Quantum Initiative, the Ph.D. program will mark the first official venture into the emerging field.
Faculty co-director Evelyn L. Hu, a professor of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering, emphasized that the new program bolsters efficiency through classes designed to fuse science and engineering.
Like many rising seniors at Harvard each year, Jenna D. Lang â21 spent the summer before her final year searching for post-graduate job opportunities. This yearâs senior class, however, is graduating into a job market that looks radically different from what it did a year ago.
When Lang reached out to one small media company she hoped to work for, she learned that the coronavirus pandemic had left it struggling to hold on its existing employees, let alone hire new graduates.
âIâve run into that problem a couple of times with smaller organizations â that theyâre just not hiring this year, which is unfortunate because this is the year Iâm graduating,â Lang said.