PASADENA (AP) — The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena has been awarded a $12.6 million federal grant to set up a new center to study physics.

The school announced Friday that the money from the National Science Foundation will help establish the Caltech Institute for Quantum Information and Matter.

Caltech beat out 50 competing requests for the grant, which will be paid out over five years.

Every three years, the NSF selects new Physics Frontier Centers for funding based on their potential for advances in quantum physics research.

Scientists worldwide are grappling with quantum mechanics, which is described as a behavior at the atomic level that defies common sense.

The institute will be headed by Caltech professor H. Jeff Kimble.

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