Mishkat Bhattacharya, an associate professor of physics at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and a member of the Future Photon Initiative, is collaborating on a multi-university project exploring quantum science in levitated mechanical systems. The four-year grant is funded by the U.S. Department of the Navy’s Office of Naval Research. RIT received $500,000 for its role in the University of Rochester-led project, which includes Yale University, Northwestern University, University of Washington, and University of Maryland. Bhattacharya is building a theoretical framework to predict how nanoparticles made of graphene, silica, and rare-earth compounds behave when suspended within the center of a laser beam. His work will model advanced sensing designs based on the optical tweezer technique, a groundbreaking invention in laser physics that won Arthur Ashkin at Bell Laboratories half of the Nobel Prize in physics in 2018. Bhattacharya's award will help train RIT undergraduates, graduates, and postdoctoral researchers in quantum science and technology.