Christoph

Christoph Marquardt is the head of the quantum information processing group at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen. In 2008 he worked as metrology scientist at Carl Zeiss Laser Optics and then returned to academia. In 2012-2014 he was Alcatel Lucent Bell Labs guest professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and in 2013-2014 he was visiting researcher at the Technical University of Denmark. The topics of his quantum information processing group cover a broad range of quantum optics and quantum information experiments, from nonlinear photonics to satellite-based quantum key distribution and quantum limited receivers in optical fibre networks. Christoph Marquardt serves in several advisory committees of the European Union and German government and acts as a scientific advisor for the spin-off project “Infiniquant”. He is active in several EU and national quantum communication research projects and is taking care of the holistic system design of the German BMBF QuNET initiative.

Valerio

ICREA Prof. at ICFO Valerio Pruneri, project coordinator for CiViQ, is an ICREA Industrial Professor, Corning Inc. chair and group leader at ICFO. Previously he worked in industry, Avanex Corporation, formerly Corning OTI and Pirelli Optical Technologies. He has over 50 granted or pending patent families and 70 invited talks at major international conferences in the field of photonics, optical materials, multifunctional surfaces and quantum optics. His research at ICFO has so far lead to two spin-offs (www.quside.com and www.sixsenso.com). For his research and technology transfer effort, he received the Philip Morris Prize, the Pirelli Research Fellowship, the IBM Faculty Award, the Paul Ehrenfest Best Paper Award, the Duran Farell Prize and the Corning Inc. Chair.

Carl J.

Dr. Carl J. Williams is the Deputy Director of the Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He is a Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute, the Joint Center for Quantum Information in Computer Science, and Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland. Dr. Williams has led the Quantum Information Program at NIST since 2000, established the first interagency subcommittee for Quantum Information Science at the Office of Science and Technology Policy in 2008, and played in significant role in shaping the National Quantum Initiative and serves as a co-chair of the current Subcommittee on Quantum Information Science.

Tatjana

Dr. Tatjana Wilk is the General Manager of the Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology (MCQST), which is a Cluster of Excellence funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) that started in January 2019. Before that, Tatjana worked several years as a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching on single-atom cavity-QED. While coordinating a large European initial training network (ITN), Tatjana discovered her talent and her passion for science management. Now she enjoys working on forming a strong quantum community in Munich, on connecting academia and industry in Bavaria, on strengthening the education in quantum engineering and on engaging the public in quantum technology. With many supporters and like-minded colleagues in town, she is convinced that Munich is the ideal location for becoming the European Quantum Valley.

Philippe

Philippe Chomaz, former student of Ecole Normale Superieure (Paris), has been CNRS researcher at Orsay, visiting scientist at Berkeley and CEA researcher at Caen. He next served as deputy director of GANIL (Large Heavy Ion National Accelerator) and director of CEA-Irfu (Institute of Research into the Fundamental Laws of the Universe) at Saclay.Since 2016, he is the Scientific Director of CEA fundamental research division (50 laboratories and 6270 staff). He published about 200 papers in nuclear, quantum and statistical physics and gave over 100 invited talks, as well as radio and television interviews. He has been President of SFP nuclear physics division, of European Center ECT, of the Physics committee in the French research agency, of the large laboratories at CERN and Secretary of the 2012 CERN European Strategy. He is now leading the international cooperation of the quantum flagship.

Mehdi

Mehdi has been in the HPC industry for more than 15 years, his contributions to HPC span infrastructure management, reproducible HPC, as well as customers and partners enablement. Driven by passion for disruptive technologies, he recently took advantage of his background in quantum mechanics to start exploring the field of Quantum Computing. His focus is on the Quantum startups ecosystem growth and enablement. At night, Mehdi is an amateur astronomer, member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and he runs the astronomy and sciences club at his son’s school.

Tomek

Dr. Tomek Schulz is a physicist and entrepreneurial mind working on innovative future technologies that create value for society.

He gained project management and leadership skills in the academic sector as well as in the industry at an innovative consultancy company, where he built artificial intelligence and internet of things enabled solutions for a variety of industry sectors using methods such as agile project management, rapid prototyping, and design thinking.

Recently, he co-founded the cryogenics company kiutra, which has the mission to make cryogenic cooling scalable and easy. The company’s vision is to provide the cooling backbone for the second quantum revolution.

Christophe

Dr. Christophe Jurczak is co-founder and managing partner at Quantonation, the first early-stage venture fund dedicated to Deep Physics startups with a focus on the emerging and disruptive field of Quantum Technologies. Quantonation has closed 12 investments so far in Europe and North America, including leading players such as Pasqal, Orqa Computing, Multiverse, and Kets.

Christophe is an associate at the Toronto-based Creative Destruction Lab Quantum stream and is the chairman of Le Lab Quantique, a Paris based non-profit organization that deploys programs in support of the emergence of a global quantum ecosystem.

Christophe has held government and executive positions in the energy and defense sectors in France, Italy, and in the US and he has been involved in the birth of the quantum computing industry in Silicon Valley with QC Ware. He holds masters degree in Engineering and Quantum Physics respectively from Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. He also holds a Ph.D. in Quantum Physics under the supervision of Prof. Alain Aspect on laser cooling of atoms.

Ekaterina

Ekaterina Almasque is a General Partner at OpenOcean, a venture capital firm founded by entrepreneurs behind MySQL. OpenOcean invests in enabling technologies for the data-driven future, such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, data infrastructure, and automation, with its main focus on B2B software in Europe. Ekaterina is on the board of IQM, the European leader for superconducting quantum computers. Before joining OpenOcean, she was a Managing Director of the Samsung Catalyst Fund in Europe, Samsung’s Electronics $500M venture capital multistage investment fund focused on core technology areas including robotics, autonomous driving, artificial intelligence, digital health, data infrastructure, and device-level technologies. She led investments across Europe in companies such as GraphCore, Mapillary, AIMotive, Sentiance, and Quobyte, as well as several venture funds. For over ten years prior to that, Ekaterina was part of several corporate and independent venture capital funds in Silicon Valley and Europe.

Paul

Paul Crane leads a team of researchers who are defining technologies to deliver BT’s fixed, mobile and convergence strategies. Our wireless and mobile research is focused on exploiting LTE, Wi-Fi and helping the industry move to a full 5G future. We are exploring wireless and optical technologies which could provide a step change in capacity and economic coverage. The way we build networks is fundamentally changing. Our research is focussed on the application of the latest computer science technologies to networks; virtualisation, programmability, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.