Boston College’s Assistant Professor of Physics Qiong Ma has been honored with the prestigious 2025 Moore Inventor Fellowship, an accolade awarded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation that recognizes exceptional early-career scientists whose inventive research holds the promise to significantly impact the future of science and technology. Ma’s work navigates the cutting edge of materials physics and emergent quantum phenomena, focusing on designing novel materials that could revolutionize computing by bridging the gap between fundamental science and transformative technological applications.
The Moore Inventor Fellowship, now in its tenth cohort, celebrates the ongoing commitment of the foundation to nurture visionary inventors who will shape the next half-century of scientific advancements. Since its inception, the fellowship has funded 50 inventors with a $35 million investment, fostering innovation across multiple disciplines by providing a substantial $675,000 grant over three years to each fellow. Ma is among just five scientists selected from nearly 250 applicants, a testament to the uniqueness and significance of her research trajectory.
Born from the visionary impetus of Gordon Moore, famed for Moore’s Law that predicted the exponential growth of computing power, the fellowship promotes technologies that push the boundaries of science and engineering. Ma’s research embodies this visionary legacy by focusing on the design of twistronic artificial synapses—innovative semiconductor devices engineered to emulate the complex behavior of neuronal networks in the human brain. Through twistronics, which manipulates the angle between stacked two-dimensional materials to produce new electronic properties, Ma’s work leverages quantum mechanical principles to develop artificial synapses capable of sophisticated information processing.
While traditional semiconductors have served as the foundation for modern digital computing, they fall short when mimicking the brain’s analog, parallel processing capabilities. Ma’s neuron transistors, devised using twistronic methodologies, are electronic circuits that recreate synaptic plasticity—the brain’s ability to strengthen or weaken connections in response to electrical activity. This groundbreaking approach allows for networks of these devices to function in a brain-inspired manner, executing complex computational tasks with efficiency and adaptability far beyond classical silicon architectures.
A pivotal aspect of Ma’s research explores how delicate stacking and angular alignment of 2D materials, such as graphene or transition metal dichalcogenides, can give rise to emergent quantum phenomena including superconductivity and correlated insulating states. These phenomena provide the physical substrate necessary for constructing synaptic devices whose electrical conductivity dynamically changes in response to stimuli, mirroring the adaptive learning properties fundamental to biological neurons and synapses. The result is a new hardware platform for neuromorphic computing that promises improvements in energy efficiency and computational power for artificial intelligence applications.
Ma’s exploration into twistronics and artificial synapses is not just a theoretical pursuit; it involves the realization of functional devices that mimic the brain’s learning capabilities. Her work brings to light the rich interplay between condensed matter physics and computational neuroscience, two fields that rarely intersect at such a fundamental level. The “neuron transistors” she creates act as building blocks for platforms that could underlie future generations of brain-like computers designed to solve complex problems involving pattern recognition, sensory data integration, and autonomous decision-making.
The impact of Ma’s achievement is amplified by the broader significance of the Moore Inventor Fellowship, which aims to empower researchers at the interface of discovery and invention. The fellowship support enables Ma to acquire state-of-the-art scientific instruments essential for characterizing quantum materials and fabricating intricate nanodevices, as well as to bolster her research team with highly skilled postdoctoral fellows and graduate students. This funding facilitates an interdisciplinary research environment where physics, material science, and engineering converge to accelerate breakthroughs.
Since earning her Ph.D. at MIT and joining Boston College in 2021, Ma has rapidly distinguished herself with numerous accolades including the AFOSR and ONR Young Investigator Awards, a Sloan Fellowship, and honors from CIFAR and IUPAP. These achievements highlight her commitment to advancing knowledge of emergent phenomena in quantum materials, laying the foundation for technology that could revolutionize information processing architectures by mimicking natural intelligence at the hardware level.
The twistronic artificial synapse technology developed by Ma also holds promise beyond computing. By replicating neural behavior within synthetic materials, it opens pathways to better understand brain function and neurological disorders, potentially leading to novel bioelectronic devices and interfaces that integrate seamlessly with living tissue. This cross-disciplinary nexus marks a new era in which fundamental physics directly informs the design of devices capable of unprecedented interactions with biological systems.
Moreover, the Moore Inventor Fellowship’s emphasis on real-world impact aligns perfectly with Ma’s vision of being both a physicist and a hardware inventor, bridging theoretical insights with applied innovation. Her statement underscores the fellowship’s role in transforming abstract concepts of quantum materials and neural emulation into tangible scientific tools and technologies destined to reshape computing and brain-inspired systems.
As the final group of fellows completes the Moore Inventor Fellowship’s decade-long initiative, the scientific community eagerly anticipates how these inventive minds, including Ma, will translate their cutting-edge discoveries into solutions that address pressing challenges—from climate modeling and healthcare to autonomous systems and beyond. The fellowship’s legacy can be seen as a catalyst for the kind of interdisciplinary invention that defines 21st-century science.
In sum, Qiong Ma’s recognition as a 2025 Moore Inventor Fellow not only honors her pioneering work at the interface of quantum materials and neuromorphic computing but also underscores the transformative potential of merging physics with invention. Her search for materials that behave like the brain’s synapses offers a tantalizing glimpse into a future where computers are designed not just to compute but to learn and adapt like living organisms, heralding a revolution in how intelligence itself may be engineered.
Subject of Research: Quantum materials, twistronic artificial synapses, neuromorphic computing, emergent quantum phenomena, brain-inspired semiconductor devices.
Article Title: Boston College Physicist Qiong Ma Awarded 2025 Moore Inventor Fellowship for Breakthrough Work in Brain-Inspired Quantum Materials
News Publication Date: September 23, 2025
Web References:
https://www.moore.org/initiative-additional-info?initiativeId=moore-inventor-fellows
Image Credits: Boston College
Keywords: Qiong Ma, Moore Inventor Fellow, twistronics, artificial synapses, neuromorphic computing, quantum materials, brain-inspired transistors, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, emerging quantum phenomena, materials physics, neuron transistors, advanced semiconductor devices
