04/06/2021 LOWELL, Mass. â UMass Lowell researcher Archana Kamal has won two early career development awards totaling more than $1 million from the U.S. Air Force and the National Science Foundation (NSF) for her research in the emerging field of quantum information processing (QIP) with open quantum systems. QIP is based on the principles of quantum mechanics, which mathematically describe the behavior and interaction of matter and light on the atomic and subatomic scale. While todayâs digital computers encode data in the form of binary digits, or âbits,â which are a series of zeros and ones, quantum computers convert information into quantum bits, or âqubits.â A qubit, which is the basic unit of quantum information, represents a two-state, or two-level, quantum system, such as the up and down spin of an electron or the horizontal and vertical polarization of a photon.