Caltech Dedicates Quantum Research Building Engineered for Silence

The Caltech community gathers outside the new Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Center for Quantum Precision Measurement. Credit: Devin Feil for Caltech

Hirosi Ooguri, the Kent and Joyce Kresa Leadership Chair for the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy, addresses guests inside the Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Center for Quantum Precision Measurement. Credit: Devin Feil for Caltech.

Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg (front, right) celebrate the new Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Center for Quantum Precision Measurement with family and friends. Credit: Devin Feil for Caltech.

The Caltech community reception following the dedication of the Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Center for Quantum Precision Measurement on June 17, 2026. Credit: Devin Feil for Caltech.

Miles Kealing, representing California Assemblymember John Harabedian, presents a certificate of recognition to Caltech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum. Credit: Chris Flynn for Caltech.

From left to right: Jeff Himmelman, Sherman Fairchild Foundation; Bonnie Himmelman, Sherman Fairchild Foundation; Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus Kip S. Thorne; and Dr. Carolee J. Winstein outside the new Kip Thorne Laboratories at Caltech. Credit: Chris Flynn for Caltech.

Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus Kip S. Thorne (front, left) and guests gather on the walkway linking the new Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Center for Quantum Precision Measurement with other campus facilities. Credit: Chris Flynn for Caltech.

Caltech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum with Charlie A. Kawwas, president, Semiconductor Solutions Group, Broadcom, at the dedication of the Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Center for Quantum Precision Measurement. Credit: Chris Flynn for Caltech.

The dedication of the Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Center for Quantum Precision Measurement on June 17, 2026, drew a large crowd to Caltech. Credit: Chris Flynn for Caltech.

From left to right: Harold A. Rosen Professor of Physics Fiona A. Harrison; Provost David A. Tirrell; Jeff Himmelman, Sherman Fairchild Foundation; Bonnie Himmelman, Sherman Fairchild Foundation; Dr. Allen Ginsburg; Charlotte Ginsburg; Charlie A. Kawwas, Broadcom; President Thomas F. Rosenbaum; and Kent and Joyce Kresa Leadership Chair for the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy Hirosi Ooguri. Credit: Chris Flynn for Caltech.

Dr. Allen Ginsburg, Caltech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum, and Charlotte Ginsburg at the June 17, 2026, dedication of the Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Center for Quantum Precision Measurement. Credit: Chris Flynn for Caltech.

Caltech’s newest building is built around an absence. The four-story laboratory building on California Boulevard hides its real work two floors below the sidewalk, in rooms sealed against vibration, electromagnetic interference and the slightest drift in temperature — rooms engineered, in effect, to feel nothing. There, instruments sensitive enough to register a passing bus will run experiments free from the effects of the city above.

Caltech on Wednesday dedicated the Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Center for Quantum Precision Measurement, the research building that holds those laboratories.

The four floors above ground are for offices and collaboration; the work the building is built around — quantum sensing, quantum information and gravitational-wave detection — will happen on the two levels below. President Thomas F. Rosenbaum, who retires June 30, told the audience he had scheduled the ceremony “before I leave this presidency.”

The center stands at 1200 East California Boulevard on the south edge of the Caltech campus, between the Ronald and Maxine Linde Hall of Mathematics and Physics and the George W. Downs Laboratory of Physics / Charles C. Lauritsen Laboratory of High Energy Physics. A seminar pavilion is connected to the main building by a breezeway, and a tunnel links the center to the adjacent building, according to Caltech.

Caltech said the center is named for Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg of Rancho Palos Verdes, whose naming gift made the building possible. A separate grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation funded the Kip Thorne Laboratories, which are housed within the building. An anonymous donor’s gift enabled Caltech to establish the Institute for Fundamental Quantum Sciences, a research hub that will span the center and additional spaces in nearby facilities, the institute said.

Rosenbaum told the audience the project came together in pieces. He said a partnership with Broadcom funded the fourth floor as the Broadcom laboratory — “not a conventional laboratory” with experimentalists, he said, but a “thought laboratory” intended to incubate ideas. He also credited the Dwan family with supporting the larger quantum effort surrounding the building.

“The notion of a place where you can bring together people who think about important problems from very different directions is very Caltech,” Rosenbaum said. “And this building in a lot of ways represents the best of what Caltech is about.”

Hirosi Ooguri, the Fred Kavli Professor of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, opened the ceremony in his role as chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy. Ooguri became chair on Aug. 16, 2025, succeeding Fiona Harrison, who oversaw the start of construction. He previously served as founding director of Caltech’s Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics from 2014 to 2025, Caltech said.

Bonnie Himmelman, who said she served as president of the Sherman Fairchild Foundation for 30 years until last year, told the audience the foundation has supported Caltech since the early 1970s.

“We have given over 36 grants since the 1970s,” she said. “The current total is over $125 million.”

She said the foundation was started after Sherman Fairchild’s death in 1971; her father, Walter Burke Jr., served as president until 1995, and her son Jeff is the foundation’s current head.

The named laboratories within the building honor Kip Thorne, the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus. Thorne shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory’s first direct detection of gravitational waves, on Sept. 14, 2015. He delivered the address at Caltech’s 132nd Commencement on Beckman Mall on June 12.

Asked at the dedication what the building means for the future of quantum science, Thorne said the design is rare.

“This building is designed to enable scientists and engineers to develop the technology into the future. It requires a very special design, which this building has and it’s almost unique,” he said. The focus, he said, is “quantum technology, which is going to have huge impacts in the century. Huge impacts on science on technology and even on everyday lives.”

Research in the building will include future technology for LIGO, the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, condensed matter and quantum theory, and an atomic, molecular, and optical experiment, according to Caltech’s Planning, Design and Construction office. The office anticipates building occupancy in fall 2026.

The Ginsburg Center stands on the footprint of a physics building that was demolished in 2016. Caltech broke ground for the project on Aug. 10, 2023. The center was designed by HOK, the firm that designed the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., with Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification as the project’s stated goal. Pasadena-based Charles Pankow Builders was selected as general contractor.

The building is not quite finished, Rosenbaum acknowledged.

“We are here today,” he told the audience, “because — I’m to blame — because I said we’re going to have this dedication before I leave this presidency.”