
Zenith Grants
Current Status: Closed
Eligibility: Researchers and Outreach Specialists Worldwide
The zenith is the highest point achieved by a celestial body in the night sky.
Over $27 million dollars in Zenith Grants (formerly: FQxI’s Large Grants) have been awarded in multiple RFPs. These Zenith Grants are awarded (through the FQxI Fund, a donor-advised fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, or directly by FQxI) as research grants to theorists and experimenters in support of personnel, equipment, travel, workshops, and experiments; some funding also targets projects that effectively disseminate information about foundational research to laypeople. Proposals are subject to a competitive evaluation process of expert peer review similar to that employed by national scientific funding agencies.
Past Awardees
Natalia Ares
University of Oxford
Nanomechanics in the solid-state for quantum information thermodynamics (NanoQIT)
$1,815,039
Information As Fuel, 2019
John Bechhoefer
Simon Fraser University
Maxwell's demon in the real world: Experiments on the constraints governing information processing
$633,293
Information As Fuel, 2019
Jens Eisert
Jörg Schmiedmayer
Marcus Huber
Freie Universität Berlin
Atominstitut Vienna
IQOQI Vienna
Fueling quantum field machines with information
$1,345,591
Information As Fuel, 2019
Arkady Fedorov
Gerard Milburn
Sally Shrapnel
University of Queensland
Information as fuel for a quantum clock
$949,708
Information As Fuel, 2019
Benjamin Huard
Alexia Auffèves
Massimiliano Esposito
Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon
Institut Néel, CNRS, Grenoble
University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Information as fuel in colloids and superconducting quantum circuits
$1,215,386
Information As Fuel, 2019
Franco Nori
Jukka Pekola
RIKEN
Aalto University
Exploring the fundamental limits set by thermodynamics in the quantum regime
$909,500
Information As Fuel, 2019
Peter Samuelsson
Ville Maisi
Klaus Ensslin
Christopher Jarzynski
Lund University
Lund University
ETH Zürich
University of Maryland
Information-to-work conversion from classical to quantum – a nanoscale electronic demon in double quantum dots.
$1,073,137
Information As Fuel, 2019

QSpace Latest
Video: Uncertain Works | Can quantum measurements fuel tiny engines?
Quantum physicists Benjamin Huard and Alexia Auffèves are building operational quantum engines using superconducting metals, in this film by Lina Kabbadj and Toby Fitzpatrick. The physicists are using the power of quantum measurement to provide energy to small-scale engines. Will this work revolutionise the way we view and use the concept of information?
Explore more:
- Read Miriam Frankel’s Q&A with Alexia Auffèves, The Quantum Engineer.
- Listen to The Hiding Place and the Universe, a semi-fictionalised audio journey into the Huard lab in Lyon, France, with physicists Alexis Jouan and Antoine Marquet.
- Watch Austria’s Quantum Machines.
- Watch Information as Fuel.