University’s mine once produced gold, now the school plans to turn part of the dark, dusty tunnel into a quantum lab - Colorado Public Radio

On a recent weekday, mine manager Lee Fronapfel led a group of us, outfitted with headlamps and hard hats, down a pitch-black tunnel at the Edgar Experimental Mine in Idaho Springs.Back in the 1870s, miners extracted gold, silver and lead here. These days, students from theColorado School of Mines is blasting and boring through rock as an educational exercise to prepare for careers in the mining industry.The mine, which the school purchased for education and research in the 1920s, is actually a great place to run all kinds of experiments. Now it’s part of the university’s push to be at the forefront of what proponents say could be the next big technological breakthrough. We’re not talking about AI. We’re talking about quantum.Sponsor Message“So we just walked 400 meters into a mountain, and the first thing that you notice is that it's very quiet over here. Also, the temperature is very stable and there are no vibrations,” said Wouter Van De Pontseele, an assistant professor in the physics department at Mines, explaining the unique properties of a lab situated under a mountain.He’s standing in a hollowed-out space, about 45-feet deep and 15-feet high. The area is empty now. But the plan is to create a cryolab — that’s basically a very, very, very cold room. A large part of the lab will be dedicated to running quantum experiments. McKenzie Lange/CPR NewsWouter Van De Pontseele inside Edgar Mine, owned and operated by Colorado School of Mines, during a tour on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026.Location, locationQuantum mechanics are the physics laws that govern the interactions of extremely small things. That means atomic and subatomic particles. Quantum mechanics isn’t a new theory. But researchers and entrepreneurs are putting these laws to work to create new technologies.One thing the cryolab will do is create a stable environment to run quantum computing tests. Such computers would be way more powerful than the computers we have today. Theoretically, they could do things like simulate molecular interactions to discover new medicines.So, why build the lab underground?“These quantum units interact with the environment, and the environment is extremely noisy. Noisy because of vibrations, but also noisy because of cosmogenic particles … The Earth is actually a violent place. And there are permanently protons falling onto the atmosphere, which creates cascades of subatomic particles,” Van de Pontseele said.McKenzie Lange/CPR NewsNolan Cox, 22, senior at Colorado School of Mines, works inside Edgar Mine, owned and operated by School of Mines, on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026.McKenzie Lange/CPR NewsMining tools are seen inside the classroom in Edgar Mine, owned and operated by Colorado School of Mines, on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026.Without going too far down the quantum rabbit hole, let’s just say all that noise, including cosmic rays, interferes with the delicate balance required to run a quantum system. The underground lab will be shielded by a layer of earth. The power supply for the cryolab is already in place. The next step is to clean it.“Because of course, the mining environment, as you've experienced, can be very dusty. So we are building a modular clean room,” Van de Pontseele said.All of this probably sounds like science fiction to a lot of people. And some of it is. Quantum computing is a highly speculative field. Nobody actually knows how to build a quantum computer that works. Experts predict it will likely be decades before somebody figures it out.McKenzie Lange/CPR NewsThe subatomic particle hideout, a room used for research inside Edgar Mine, owned and operated by Colorado School of Mines, is seen during a tour on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026.University launches degree programBut the underground cryolab is just one piece of Mines’ quantum ambitions. The school is launching what it says is the first U.S. bachelor's degree program dedicated to quantum systems engineering.And there’s a lot more to quantum tech than computers, according to Fred Sarazin, the head of the physics department at Mines. For instance, quantum sensing is an area that is much further along than computing, he said. “It's a bunch of sensors that are really incredibly sensitive to, let's say, magnetic fields, motion, things like that. And they may just replace the GPS as a way to do positioning," Sarazin said.McKenzie Lange/CPR NewsThe classroom in Edgar Mine, owned and operated by Colorado School of Mines, is seen on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026.Much of the workforce development for quantum is focused on master’s degrees and PhDs, he said. But it turns out that more than half of the jobs now required in the quantum industry don’t require an advanced degree, according to Sarazin.“Let's call them quantum technicians. So those people, they don't necessarily need to know a ton about quantum. They need to know enough about quantum,” Sarazin said.McKenzie Lange/CPR NewsHoles are seen in the walls inside Edgar Mine, owned and operated by Colorado School of Mines, during a tour on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. Students use the walls of the mine to practice drilling holes.He said that companies need people who can see the whole picture of a quantum system, “ … all the way to the engineering, the deployment, making it cost-effective, commercially viable, reliable, you name it.”“And so what they wanted to have is people, engineers, that would be a lot more versatile, that would be able to understand the whole process, the whole system from consumption to deployment,” Sarazin said.For hire: quantum workersColorado will need these workers. The state was designated a quantum technology hub by the U.S. government in 2023. The following year, the Elevate Quantum consortium, composed of companies and universities in Colorado and other western states, was awarded $41 million in federal funding to support industry growth.The status of that funding is opaque. A spokesperson for Elevate Quantum said funding is flowing “as requested and as normal.” But the group won’t disclose the amount of money that’s been disbursed.McKenzie Lange/CPR NewsA map of Edgar Mine, owned and operated by Colorado School of Mines, is seen hanging on a wall next to hard hats inside the mine on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026.Regardless, the aim of Mines’ bachelor's degree program is to train students to go straight to work for quantum companies after graduation. But some of those students could end up doing the more experimental work underground in that dark, quiet mine, according to Sarazin. “I suspect that Wouter here is going to have some … undergraduate students basically working and taking data at the underground mine here,” he said.