New UAlbany Faculty to Explore AI, Quantum Tech and the Human Brain

ALBANY, N.Y. (Aug. 18, 2026) — UAlbany researchers are studying how to combine the enormous power of quantum computing with the unparalleled adaptability and energy-efficiency of the human brain thanks to a new endowment from the Simons Foundation to the State University of New York.

The endowment of UAlbany’s Neuromorphic Quantum Computing Constellation will fund four Simons Empire Faculty Fellows — two focused on neuroscience and one each in mathematics and computer hardware engineering. SUNY announced the fellows Tuesday.

The fellows joining the campus this month will work at the frontier of two so-far distinct computing fields whose integration may be essential to harnessing the power of artificial intelligence. Despite the dizzying pace of recent advances in AI and quantum computing, our own brains remain the most powerful processors known to humans. The goal of this new cluster is to model, simulate and build next-generation intelligent systems inspired by the complex organization and function of the brain.

“As a research university, we know the incredible potential of the human mind. Now, thanks to the Simons Foundation, University at Albany researchers are leveraging expertise from across the university to develop AI computing systems that mimic the adaptability, efficiency and processing power of the human brain,” UAlbany President Havidán Rodríguez said. “We are so grateful to the Simons Foundation for funding this initiative and for their tireless support of scientific research.”

Four new faculty members

The Simons Foundation’s support will fund four new tenure-track faculty members in UAlbany’s College of Arts and Sciences and College of Nanotechnology, Science, and Engineering.

The newly hired faculty members are:

• Assistant Professor Kristyn Lizbinski, Department of Biological Sciences
• Assistant Professor Tahereh Jabbari, Department of Nanoscale Science & Engineering
• Assistant Professor Kent Vashaw, Department of Mathematics & Statistics
• Assistant Professor Susan Wardle, Department of Psychology

The new hires will build on UAlbany’s existing strength in neurobiology, molecular and cellular neuroscience, developmental neurogenetics, cognitive neuroscience, pure mathematics, and in emerging fields like machine learning, quantum information and quantum probability, quantum photonics and nanoscale science and engineering. 

“Thanks to this landmark investment by the Simons Foundation, we have hired four impressive faculty members whose collective expertise positions UAlbany to lead breakthroughs at the intersection of these exciting fields,” said UAlbany Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Carol H. Kim. “Interdisciplinary teaching and research should be encoded in the DNA of any great university and are essential to our vision for the new Neuromorphic Quantum Computing Constellation that will help unlock the computational secrets of the human brain.” 

A marvel of computing efficiency

Neuromorphic computing seeks to build artificial intelligence systems that function like biological neurons (processors) and synapses (electrical communication points) inside the brain. It’s the massive number of neurons and the tens-of-millions of interconnections between them that make the human brain a marvel of energy-efficient problem solving. 

Quantum computing is the branch of computing that harnesses the quantum properties of particles, including their ability to exist in many states at once—like a flipped coin spinning in mid-air. While a regular computer processes bits of information that are encoded as either heads or tails, a quantum computer processes qubits that can be heads, tails, or both at the same time. This gives quantum computers the power to solve extraordinarily difficult problems much faster.

Traditional AI systems running on classical hardware are incredibly fast — but not very smart. They can do trillions of calculations per second but must tackle complex problems by brute force, examining every possibility. Quantum computers offer a fundamentally different mode of computation with their ability to examine several possibilities at once —a version of brute force, just faster. 

Neuromorphic approaches, on the other hand, mimic the more complex ways brains process information like visual inputs and abstract concepts. Compared to a computer, the brain is relatively slow. The goal of this new research constellation is to develop advanced brain-inspired neural networks to control and optimize quantum computing processors — combining the best of both types of information processing.