University of Calgary physicist and researcher Paul Barclay (pictured) has had a fantastic year. In collaboration with colleagues at both the University of Calgary and the University of Alberta, Barclay will lead a new Canada Foundation for Innovation project worth more than $13 million to establish a nanofabrication "foundry" housed at the UofC. The foundry, the first of its kind in Canada, will produce complex diamond optomechanical devices, Barclay's area of world-leading expertise. Barclay is the former Alberta Innovates Scholar in Quantum Nano Systems, and he holds a Strategic Research Project grant. The goal of the grant is to support his work to fabricate devices and other hardware for connecting optical networks to quantum memories that could enable a "quantum internet." The foundry will function as a workshop where creating these devices in Alberta will be possible, and it's Barclay's expertise that led to his being chosen to lead the foundry. Learn more! Check out the Paul's responses to some of our questions below! What is quantum photonics? What is the nano-fabrication foundry? Where does Alberta stack up in terms of knowledge and skill in this area? What does support from Alberta Innovates mean? Researcher bio: Paul Barclay Paul Barclay completed his Ph.D. in Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology in 2007. In 2008 he joined Hewlett Packard Labs, in Palo Alto, California, where he helped establish the emerging field of diamond quantum nanophotonics. Since starting his lab at the Institute for Quantum Science and Technology at the University of Calgary 2011, he has performed pioneering research in the field of diamond photonics and optomechanics, and in nanophotonic sensor development. Techniques developed by his lab have been adopted by many of the world's leading quantum photonics research groups.