As the director of SRI’s Applied Sciences Laboratory, Heidel leads a team that turns deep science into real-world solutions.
In the past decade, silicon photonics has emerged as a critical tool for advancing both classical computing and numerous quantum applications. In addition to making classical computers more efficient and powerful, new photonics techniques will enable quantum-based sensors, computers, navigations systems, and communications platforms with profound implications for healthcare, defense, autonomous systems, and beyond.
At SRI, much of that cutting-edge photonics and quantum research is overseen by Nicole Heidel, who directs the institute’s Applied Sciences Laboratory. Here, she explains how she and her team are pushing the limits of what’s possible, often working on nano-scale projects that deliver macro-scale impact.
You joined SRI ten years ago to focus on photonics. What drew you to that technical area in the first place?
My time in graduate school coincided with an exciting inflection point in silicon photonics, which is a field where we implement multiple different optical functions on a silicon chip. Some of the first DARPA programs in that area funded my graduate work.
Back then, there were some fascinating questions that still hadn’t been solved. We were asking: Can we implement different functions in a single material system? We sat around the table saying: Is this possible? We weren’t sure.
It took a big research team. And we marched down the path to make it happen.
“Today, people are looking at photonic chips as a way to enable efficient data flow at a massive scale, which will improve the performance and sustainability of AI data centers.” — Nicole Heidel
When I came to SRI, the larger field of silicon photonics was focused on data communication for things like data centers. But I was interested in doing something else. Instead of competing with the players who were making progress on improving the speed and power efficiency of digital transceivers, I wanted the team to focus on using the same silicon platforms to solve different problems. I felt strongly that the same devices and processes could be applied to microwave photonics and quantum systems and that we could make an impact at the system level, rather than the component level. I saw an opportunity to do some truly unique and impactful technical work.
For those who haven’t been following the trajectory of photonics innovation, what is it and what’s important to know about the previous decade of this work?
Fundamentally, it’s all about manipulating optical signals rather than electrical signals. A great example is our recent work on the DARPA HAPPI program. We’re exploring how to do 3D photonics — essentially creating a chip that transmits information by bending light in three dimensions. It’s wildly difficult. But it could be a game-changer in terms of allowing us to build massively complex photonic systems.
The recent evolution is that, today, silicon photonics is becoming one of the foundational technologies for AI. That idea simply wasn’t around when I was in grad school. We didn’t have generative AI and this explosion of data centers. Today, people are looking at photonic chips as a way to enable efficient data flow at a massive scale, which will improve the performance and sustainability of AI data centers.
Some of the biggest players in AI are investing in silicon photonics companies.
Your lab is also developing quantum technology. Can you talk about what is being developed?
SRI has spent 80 years turning complex, emerging technologies into real-world solutions — and quantum is no different. We’re developing new quantum design and manufacturing techniques and building advanced quantum sensors capable of measuring physical phenomena with unprecedented precision, opening new possibilities in healthcare diagnostics, defense applications, and beyond. As the manager of the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C), SRI sits at the center of the entire quantum ecosystem, connecting industry, government, and academia to accelerate the technology from lab to market. When it comes to bridging the gap between cutting-edge quantum research and practical deployment, SRI has the track record, the partnerships, and the expertise to make it happen.
Can you point to a specific project where your lab is pushing the limits of quantum technology?
Today, a lot of quantum R&D requires complex hardware setups consisting of multiple lenses and collection optics. Those setups do work, but they’re very sensitive to factors like vibration and temperature changes. We’ve found a way to put photonics on a chip and attach our vapor cell of atoms directly on top of it, which gives you a piece of quantum hardware that’s much more compact and resilient. That might sound simple, but when you need to interrogate individual atoms, manufacture tiny vacuums, and fuse everything together in a way that actually works, it’s extremely challenging. At this tiny scale, bonding technology is really an art; having an ideal interface is critical. We had to design a whole bunch of new structures from the ground up. And we’ve figured out a way to do it.
What will the next decade of quantum innovation look like?
When it comes to getting quantum technologies out of the lab and into the real world, I think of it as fundamentally a materials problem. You’re dealing with photonics, electronics, cryogenics, and qubits or atoms themselves. Compared to most hardware problems, there are so many integration mismatches that can pop up.
“When it comes to bridging the gap between cutting-edge quantum research and practical deployment, SRI has the track record, the partnerships, and the expertise to make it happen.” — Nicole Heidel
Fundamentally, the solutions are going to be collaborative. You need photonics, electronics, and quantum or atomic experts sitting down together. And they need to realize that what one person thinks is trivial is actually very difficult.
To have those conversations across disciplines takes time and effort. In terms of the forcing factors to make it happen, it’s a mix of things: some significant federally funded research programs and the economic incentives to innovate as the quantum economy and venture capital investments grow.
And then you’ll have the foundries and the fabrication facilities start to support the specific things that the systems need.
At SRI, these collaborative conversations are already happening. The photonics researchers and the atomic researchers have been working together for years. More recently, we launched an internal R&D effort that brings together my lab’s quantum and photonics hardware expertise with our Computer Science Laboratory’s expertise in system assurance. Today’s system assurance solutions work great for classical computing, but we don’t yet know how they work for quantum information systems. So this is an effort to get way ahead of that problem. We want to know how to validate the reliability of quantum information systems that haven’t even been invented yet. It’s exciting and potentially groundbreaking work.
Learn more about how SRI is advancing the future of quantum.
