Keith Hengen is applying lessons from the brain to next-generation quantum sensors through a U.S. Department of Energy-funded project. Keith Hengen, an associate professor of biology who studies the brain’s computational power, has often collaborated with mathematicians and physicists in his quest to understand cognition. Still, Hengen was surprised when Whitney Armstrong, a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory, approached him about a new endeavor: developing quantum sensors for next-generation computing. Accepting the challenge, Hengen joined Armstrong as a co-principal investigator of a project called “Superconducting Polychronous Computation Near Criticality.” In late July, the U.S. Department of Energy awarded $750,000 to Hengen and Armstrong as part of its Genesis Mission, a collection of research projects designed to “deliver breakthroughs to secure American energy dominance, accelerate scientific discovery, and strengthen national security.” Hengen spoke with the Ampersand about his role in the new project and how lessons from the brain could help advance quantum computing. How did you connect with a physicist at Argonne? My lab is especially interested in a brain state called criticality. Criticality describes a complex system when it’s balanced at the tipping point between order and chaos. At criticality, information processing is maximized. For obvious reasons, we believe the brain must be tuned near criticality for optimal thinking and learning. Whitney Armstrong at Argonne was looking for a way to increase the accuracy and reduce the energy consumption of quantum sensors that could be used for next-generation computers and electronics. He came across a preprint of a paper I wrote with Leandro Fosque, a postdoctoral researcher in my lab, and ShiNung Ching, a professor of electrical and systems engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering. Woodrow Shew, a physicist at the University of Arkansas, was another co-author. That paper established criticality as a universal principle that could be