5th NIST Quantum Matters in Material Sciences (QMMS) Workshop 2026

The 5th Quantum Matters in Materials Science (QMMS) workshop organized by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will be held as an in-person only event at the NIST Gaithersburg campus, Maryland on February 18-19, 2026. The workshop will be focused on quantum phenomena in emerging materials for next generation devices. All materials are inherently quantum in nature, but when quantum phenomena manifest at the classical scale, we can hope to leverage their properties for applications. Large scale initiatives such as the Materials Genome Initiative, the National Quantum Initiative, and the CHIPS for America Act represent compelling approaches to investigate quantum materials and accelerate their development for quantum information systems (QIS), for the use in future integrated circuits, and other practical industrial applications. For these approaches and initiatives to be successful, it is essential to have good synergy between experimental and computational efforts. This workshop aims at streamlining this effort. To make the workshop as effective as possible, we plan to mainly focus on 2D and 3D inorganic superconducting, topological, magnetic, and semiconducting materials, but we are not limited to those systems. Some of the key topics to be addressed by both theory and experiments are: 1. discovery and characterization of new superconductors/topological, magnetic, and semiconducting materials, 2. optimization of known quantum materials, 3. investigation of defect induced behavior and transitions, 4. electronics, spintronics, and quantum memory applications, 5. challenges in applying QIS technologies at industrial scale, 6. successes and challenges in integrating next-generation materials into integrated circuits (microchips) 7. the role of material interfaces at the quantum level, 8. high fidelity many-body computational methods to treat quantum materials, 9. applications for quantum computing and quantum simulations.