FQF awards 3 projects in first lighthouse & exploratory funding call round

The Finnish Quantum Flagship Lighthouse and Exploratory Projects reviewing panel has selected three projects as part of its first funding call.

The call was open from November 2024 – January 2025, and a total of five submissions were reviewed by the review panel. The panel included members from all FQF host organizations. You can review the criteria for the first funding call here.

The awardees were notified of their selection in March 2025. You can read the details of their projects below:

AthenaQEC: Real-Time Decoding of Over 1,000 Logical Qubits​

Exploratory 75k€​

This project designs and implements flexible, scalable and high-performant QEC decoders using reinforcement-learning enhanced schemes at a large scale – on the LUMI supercomputer. The project aims to explore methodologies and implementations that support the Finnish strategic vision on 1,000 logical qubits by 2035.​

Alexandru Paler (Aalto)​

Bo Zhao, external PI (Aalto)​

Phonon-blocked self-cooling junction calorimeter​

Exploratory 75k€​

The project experimentally demonstrates a new type of low-temperature calorimeter based on superconductor-semiconductor tunnel junction technology, with a prospect for boosting both the sensitivity and speed over the current state-of-the-art. It takes advantage of two beneficial properties of tunnel junctions: (i) their ability to efficiently block the vibrational heat flow channel, and (ii) their capability to self-cool the device. In addition, this novel detector concept leverages mature silicon processing technology, offering robust, multi-pixel wafer-scale fabrication scalability. ​

Ilari Maasilta (Jyväskylä)​

Mika Prunnila, external PI (VTT)​

Realization and characterization of Si-based gatemon qubits​

Lighthouse 150k€​

The project aims to enhance silicide materials for coherent superconducting quantum circuits, offering scalability with reduced complexity and cost. It involves growing high-quality silicide films to minimize decoherence and optimize interface transparency at the silicide/Si interface using CMOS techniques. The goal is to reduce the Schottky barrier and achieve gate control of the superconducting proximity effect in silicide/Si/silicide junctions. Successful development may lead to scalable quantum circuits like gatemon qubits and parametric amplifiers (AI summary).​

Pertti Hakonen (P1) , Jukka Pekola (P2) (Aalto)​

Antti Kemppinen (P2) (VTT)​

All three of the projects will span two years. The FQF Lighthouse and Exploratory Projects programme aims to advance synergies and collaboration between research groups across all FQF host organizations, with a special emphasis on cross-institutional collaboration.

The next funding call will be in the second half of 2026.