Kate Timmerman is a neuroscientist. She did her PhD thinking she would live in a lab, then found out faculty never stay in the lab. She built scientific communities at Northwestern, then industry-research partnerships at UChicago.

The CQE consortium started as UChicago, Argonne, and Fermilab. It now includes UIUC, Northwestern, UW Madison, and Purdue.

We spoke about Duality launching before the federal money showed up, ecosystems that Chicago had in mind when launching our quantum hub,, and what the next CQE leader has to do to keep up the momentum.

Here’s a bit of our conversation:

KT: I've known about quantum physics for years. The first time I really learned about it in the context of the Chicago Quantum Exchange, and in the context of a career, was the job posting for hire number one. CQE launched in 2017 as UChicago, Argonne, and Fermilab. The membership has grown to include UIUC, Northwestern, UW Madison, Purdue, and partners across the region and globally.

When I saw that posting, I saw quantum. I knew I was not an expert in quantum technologies. I also saw skills I'd already done: building a scientific community, working with industry, and a brand-new consortium. I said, I could bring that to this. A collaboration that was just getting started. That paralleled a lot of my previous work.

KT: Incredibly intentional. Across our ecosystem we had a ton of quantum researchers. They just hadn't been coordinated. Many of them had been talking to federal agencies and legislators for years to make the NQI Act happen.

That 18 months is something we keep pushing toward. Things seem to be going great right now, but what's the gap you only have early indicators of today, that becomes a hard problem in a few years? Launch the program now. Duality is the example. In 2021 we launched the first quantum-focused startup accelerator in the United States. Similar programs existed outside the U.S. Not here. We could have applied for federal funding and waited. We saw the urgency and launched. That made it clear this region wasn't just a research region. It had an economic opportunity. We're always asking: what's the next thing we could do 18 months before everyone else?

KT: We've built an ecosystem. Eight years ago, very few people said Chicago and quantum in the same sentence, or the Midwest and quantum.

The fun thing is the other one keeps changing. It's always Chicago and blank, but the blank changes. Whether you're talking education, research, or innovation, this region still has a long way to go and a huge opportunity.

What I expect of the next leader is the same level of step change. Bring us to the next stage. Think about the opportunities we have today for scale-up that we didn't have at the beginning, when you had to do a lot of hard grunt work and bootstrapping, plus the new ones that will show up. If you know of anyone, let them know we're looking.

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