Tonight: 2nd Annual Quantum Qruise, aboard the Leading Lady at Gate #2, 112 E. Wacker Dr (stairs down at the NE corner of Michigan and Wacker). Arrive by 6:00, board 6:15, sails 6:30 to 8:30. Summer business casual, flat shoes, light jacket, rain or shine (indoor salon). No plus-ones; each registration is reviewed. The format is deliberately unstructured: open conversation, one toast, two bars. Organizer is Brian Pearson at qBraid.
Who's likely there. The site names only 2026 sponsors (Deloitte, JPMorganChase, Clayco, Cooley), but the 2025 sailing drew qBraid, EeroQ, Illinois EDC, P33, JPMorganChase, Cooley, CBRE, and Chicago Quantum Exchange leadership. The Chicago hardware scene is concentrated at the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park (the old South Works site): PsiQuantum broke ground there in September 2025, Infleqtion announced its Sqale neutral-atom system there in July, and IBM is reported as an anchor tenant. EeroQ is Chicago HQ, memQ is a UChicago/Argonne spinout, and Fermilab's SQMS superconducting-materials center is in the orbit. So my expected guest list: qBraid, EeroQ, memQ, Infleqtion, PsiQuantum, IBM, Argonne/Fermilab people, plus the finance and legal crowd.
Where our computational materials work could actually help them:
EeroQ (electron-on-helium qubits, first charge-qubit demonstration published in Nature Physics this June). Their coherence problem is charge noise from traps in the substrate dielectrics under the helium film, and the helium film thickness itself is set by van der Waals forces against the oxide stack. Trap-level defect calculations in SiO2/SiN near the helium interface and film-stability modeling against surface roughness are a direct fit for what we do. Also superconducting resonator materials (Nb vs NbTiN vs Ta) with amorphous-oxide two-level-system loss at millikelvin.
memQ (erbium-doped TiO2 quantum memories on silicon nitride photonics, telecom band). This is the single most natural entry point on the boat. They have a live, published materials problem: which crystallographic site Er occupies, anatase vs rutile selection, the concentration vs optical-coherence tradeoff, and oxygen-vacancy chemistry where they needed ex-situ annealing to suppress dephasing. Textbook DFT defect engineering with published numbers (they measured 27 kHz spectral diffusion over 4 ms) to benchmark against. A computational group could hand them defect formation energies and charge-state diagrams that guide their annealing recipes.
PsiQuantum (photonic, fusion-based, SNSPD detectors, wafer-scale foundry fabrication). Scaling is gated by photon loss and detector films: WSi/MoSi superconducting nanowire film composition and disorder set detection efficiency and reset time, and waveguide sidewall-roughness scattering multiplies across fusion networks. Superconducting-property prediction and optical-loss modeling are real levers here.
Infleqtion (laser-trapped cesium neutral atoms, plus clocks and RF sensors). Vacuum-system materials: outgassing, alkali compatibility, hydrogen permeation of chamber steels and viewports. Patch potentials and adsorbate-driven electric-field noise on gold/ITO field plates cause anomalous heating of trapped atoms. Vapor-cell anti-relaxation coatings for the sensor line.
IBM (transmons, heavy tantalum focus). Ta film texture and native-oxide interfaces still dominate residual dielectric loss, plus Al/AlOx junction quality and packaging thermal-contraction mismatch across the cryostat stack.
Fermilab SQMS / Argonne (if their people are aboard, and Argonne co-authors memQ's papers so likely). Niobium cavity surface chemistry, nitrogen-doping treatments, niobium pentoxide layers, hydride formation, trapped vortices. This is the most receptive technical audience in the room for an open-science materials contribution.
Clayco (building the IQMP campus): thinner but uncompetitive angle. Cryogenic plant siting, vibration isolation for dilution refrigerators, ground conditions at a former steel mill, low-outgassing facility materials. Nobody else will ask them about this.
Microsoft and IonQ sponsored the July Global Quantum Forum in Chicago, so some presence is possible but unconfirmed. Microsoft's topological program (epitaxial Al-InAs hybrid wires) would be the deepest materials conversation in the field if anyone from that team shows.
My read on the two best openers: the Er:TiO2 rare-earth thin-film problem (memQ) and superconducting-film loss (IBM, EeroQ resonators, SQMS). Both are datasets-plus-DFT problems with published baselines to compare against, and both are represented on this guest list. One specific technical question per company is the right ammunition; the event is built for the "nobody here has asked me that before" moment.
Full draft with sources and links: drafts/quantum-qruise-2026-brief.md.