In principle, quantum-based devices such as computers and sensors could vastly outperform conventional digital technologies for carrying out many complex tasks. But developing such devices in practice has been a challenging problem despite great investments by tech companies as well as academic and government labs. Today’s biggest quantum computers still only have a few hundred...

If Changhao Li were to trace the origins of his love of nature, he would point to the time when he was 9, observing the night sky from his childhood home in the small town of Jinan, China. “At that moment I felt that nature is so beautiful, I just wanted to go outside the...