NEW YORK, NY, Oct. 2, 2026 — Physicist Gabriele Grosso has been selected as one of 21 mid-career scientists to join the 2026 Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s Experimental Physics Investigators Initiative cohort.
The five-year, $1.35 million award will allow Grosso and his lab to pursue an unconventional idea in quantum science: Instead of treating tiny vibrations inside materials as a problem to be eliminated, researchers will endeavor to put them to useful work.
“I’m incredibly excited and honored to receive this award,” said Grosso, a professor with the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center ’s (CUNY ASRC) Photonics Initiative and a physics professor at the CUNY Graduate Center . “It gives our lab the freedom to pursue a new direction and ask a fundamental question about quantum materials: Can we learn to control and turn vibrations that are often viewed as obstacles into something useful? The Moore award will allow us to take risks, develop new experimental capabilities, and follow the science wherever it leads.”
Quantum technologies harness the unusual behavior of matter at extremely small scales and hold promise for new approaches to computing, communication, and sensing. But quantum systems are extremely delicate. Vibrations, heat, and other disturbances can interfere with their behavior, so researchers often try to isolate quantum systems from their surroundings.
Grosso is taking a different approach. His team will investigate whether localized molecular vibrations embedded within solid materials can instead be built into quantum systems and used as a resource for controlling, transferring, and storing quantum information, turning a type of motion usually regarded as noise into a functional quantum resource.
The research will focus on tiny defects inside a class of semiconductor materials called wide-bandgap nitrides. Some of these defects behave as highly complex, miniature quantum systems in which electronic states, light, electrical charge, and molecular vibrations can interact within a single nanostructure. Grosso and his team will use advanced laser and spectroscopy techniques to study these defects one at a time to learn how molecular vibrations interact with electronic and optical properties and, ultimately, whether those vibrations can be precisely controlled. If they can, the vibrations could give scientists new ways to manipulate quantum information, reduce errors, and encode more information within a quantum system.
The materials Grosso’s team is studying offer another potential advantage: They could be compatible with existing semiconductor manufacturing and able to support quantum functions at or near room temperature. Operating without the need for complex cryogenic cooling could reduce the cost, energy use, and infrastructure required for quantum technologies, making them more practical for broader use. These characteristics could make them particularly promising for future quantum devices.
“Professor Grosso’s award recognizes both the originality of his research and his willingness to challenge conventional thinking,” said Andrea Alù , founding director of the CUNY ASRC Photonics Initiative and Distinguished Professor of Physics at the CUNY Graduate Center. “This is exactly the kind of fundamental, high-risk research that can open entirely new directions in photonics and quantum science, in line with the overarching goals of our Photonics Initiative. We are excited to see where he and his team take this work.”
Grosso is the second CUNY ASRC Photonics researcher to receive a Moore Foundation Experimental Physics Investigator award . Matthew Sfeir, then a professor with the Photonics Initiative, received the award in 2023 for research investigating the infrared and terahertz properties of novel organic materials and their potential use in advanced photonic and quantum technologies.
The Experimental Physics Investigators Initiative provides sustained, flexible funding to mid-career physicists pursuing ambitious research. The program is designed to give researchers freedom to take scientific risks, develop new approaches, and pursue unexpected findings. Grosso’s research is among an impressive range of funded projects spanning condensed matter; fluid dynamics; nuclear physics; quantum information; soft matter; and atomic, molecular, and optical physics.
“With nearly 100 investigators now at work, we are seeing the range of bold, original science we hoped this Initiative would make possible," said Theodore Hodapp , program director for the Initiative. "From the start, our aim has been to accelerate progress at the frontier of experimental physics by giving brilliant mid-career scientists the kind of flexible, sustained support that federal grants rarely can. That freedom lets them take on risky, high-reward experiments and follow ideas when research results lead them down new pathways.”
For Grosso, that freedom will allow his lab to build and carry out first-of-a-kind experiments that combine advanced optical and quantum-control techniques to probe quantum systems with unprecedented capabilities, while pursuing a different way of thinking about quantum materials: whether vibrations that scientists have traditionally tried to suppress could instead become useful building blocks for the quantum technologies of the future.
About the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center
The Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) elevates scientific research and education at CUNY and beyond. The center promotes collaborative, interdisciplinary research through five interconnected initiatives: environmental sciences, nanoscience, neuroscience, photonics, and structural biology. Its researchers work alongside one another and use state-of-the-art core facilities that are available to scientists from CUNY, other academic institutions, government, and industry. Located in Upper Manhattan, the CUNY ASRC serves as the center of an integrated science network connecting faculty, students, and postdoctoral researchers across CUNY.
About the Graduate Center of The City University of New York
The CUNY Graduate Center is a leader in public graduate education devoted to enhancing the public good through pioneering research, serious learning, and reasoned debate. The Graduate Center offers ambitious students nearly 50 doctoral and master’s programs of the highest caliber, taught by top faculty from throughout CUNY — the nation’s largest urban public university. Through its nearly 40 centers, institutes, initiatives, and the Advanced Science Research Center, the Graduate Center influences public policy and discourse and shapes innovation. The Graduate Center’s extensive public programs make it a home for culture and conversation.