Speakers "FUTURAS IN RES" conference: The Quantum Breakthrough

Prof. Reimund Neugebauer was born on June 27, 1953 in Thuringia, Germany.

He studied mechanical engineering at Technische Universität Dresden (TUD), where he obtained his doctorate in 1984 and his postdoctoral lecturing qualification (Habilitation) in 1991.

After holding various senior positions in industry, he was appointed as a university lecturer at TUD in 1989, subsequently becoming executive director of the Institute for Forming Technology and Machine Tools in 1990. From 2000 he held the position of managing director of the Institute for Machine Tools and Production Processes at Chemnitz University of Technology (TU Chemnitz).

On October 1, 2012, Prof. Neugebauer was appointed the 10th President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.

With his profound management and R&D background, he is responsible for research, science policy and international affairs. During his presidency, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft grew by around 10,000 employees and increased its research budget by around one billion euros.

Prof. Neugebauer has been co-chair of the High-Tech Forum and is member of the Steering Committee of the In-novation Dialog, working closely with the Federal Chancellor and other representatives of the federal government, science, industry and society. He is also a member of the Steering Committees of the Industrie 4.0 and Lernende Systeme platforms, which are joint undertakings involving the government, industry, professional associations and the scientific community.

Prof. Neugebauer’s many other distinctions include the Order of Merit of the German State of Saxony and the Officer‘s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Prof. Markus Aspelmeyer is a professor of physics at the University of Vienna and scientific director at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. He studied physics and philosophy in Munich, Germany. Prof. Aspelmeyer is regarded as one of the pioneers of the field of quantum optomechanics. His research combines the development of new quantum technologies with fundamental quantum experiments. He is co-founder of Crystalline Mirror Solutions (now Thorlabs Crystalline Solutions), which provides novel optics for laser precision measurements. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, and a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg. His current research is focused on the intriguing puzzles in quantum physics and gravity.

Prof. Rainer Blatt studied physics and received his PhD at the University of Mainz (Germany). As a postdoctoral fellow, he worked on the laser cooling of atomic beams with John L. Hall (Nobel Prize in 2005) in Boulder (USA) and as a research assistant at the University of Hamburg (Germany) with P. Toschek, where he worked with single trapped ions.

In 1994, he became a professor of physics at the University of Göttingen and in 1995, he accepted a chair position at the Institute for Experimental Physics of the University of Innsbruck, where he works with trapped ions in Paul traps for quantum computers, quantum simulations, and quantum metrology.

Since 2003 he has been the research director of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) in Innsbruck (Austria).

Prof. Rainer Blatt is co-founder of Alpine Quantum Technologies GmbH (AQT) in Innsbruck, a company that develops commercial quantum computers. For his quantum information research, he received the Schrödinger Prize of the ÖAW in 2006, the Stern-Gerlach Medal of the German Physical Society (DPG) in 2012, the John Stewart Bell Prize of CQIQC (Toronto) in 2015 and the Micius Quantum Prize in 2018.

Prof. Rainer Blatt is a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.

Kees Eijkel is Director of Business Development at QUTech, a leading research institute in quantum computing and quantum internet, and a cooperation between Delft University of Technology and the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research TNO.

Kees holds an M.Sc. in mathematics and a Ph.D. in technical sciences. He has a long career at the interface of academic research and commercialization, as Commercial Director of the MESA+ Institute of Nanotechnology in Twente, as CEO of the startup system and Science Park in Twente and as Business Development Director for that university. He has served on numerous boards of non-profits in that arena and was the founder of a number of early-stage public and private venture mechanisms.

Dr. Fabian Lausen studied mathematics in Duisburg and „“History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science“ ” in Bielefeld. In 2013, he received his Ph.D. in philosophy of science from the University of Bielefeld. From 2013 until 2015, he worked in the field of philosophy of science.

From 2015 until 2021, he worked as a desk officer for the German Council of Science and Humanities (“Wissenschaftsrat”). In 2021, he joined the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

Since February 2021, Dr. Oliver de Vries has been CTO of Quantum Optics Jena GmbH.

Prior to this, he worked for more than ten years at Fraunhofer IOF in the department of laser physics, where he first came in contact with quantum technologies.

He studied electrical engineering and laser and optical technologies at Ernst-Abbe University, Jena and obtained his doctorate on the topic of high-power fiber lasers at Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.

Dr. Wilhelm Kaenders has directed the growth of TOPTICA from a small start-up into a fully developed international operation, including subsidiaries in the US, Japan and China. With 400 people, the company focuses on the development and production of laser tools for industry and academia and has become one of Europe’s leading high-tech laser and photonics company headquartered near Munich, Germany.

TOPTICA’s core business addresses international industrial and academic research and newly emerging industrial application markets. The scientific field of quantum optics, in particular rapidly emerging cold atom and ion physics activities, have been using the laser instrumentation developed at TOPTICA for many years, as is documented in many hundreds of scientific papers. The company is also active in the field of biophotonics and non-destructive material testing.

Dr. Kaenders received a degree in physics from Bonn University and the International Diploma of the Imperial College, London in 1989. He then finalized a PhD in physics in Hannover in the field of laser-cooled atoms and ions by devising and building magnetic atom optics devices under the guidance of Prof. D. Meschede. In collaboration with the Ludwig-Maximillian University/Max-Planck Institute of Quantum Optics group of Theodor Hänsch, sophisticated tunable and narrow band diode laser technology was developed during that period. This served as the starting point for the commercial activities of TOPTICA in the following years.

Dr. Kaenders is an active member of OSA (Fellow), SPIE (Fellow), and the German Physical Society (DPG). For the term 2009-2011, Wilhelm served as elected director-at-large on the board of the Optical Society (OSA). Since 2007, he has been a member and since 2009 chairman of the advisory board of “LASER. World of Photonics” – an industrial consulting body to the Messe München, Germany. His scientific work was recognized with the Berthold-Leibinger Innovation Award in 2016 and the OSA Paul-Forman-Excellence Award in 2017.

Dr. Katrin Kobe is the CEO of Bosch‘s Quantum Sensing start-up and holds a PhD in physics. She has nearly 30 years of experience with technology companies. Dr. Katrin Kobe worked as a top management consultant at McKinsey and more than 20 years in operational top management positions. She has international experience and was responsible for subsidiaries in Eastern Europe and China. Her industry experience includes plant and mechanical engineering, automotive, sensor technology, medical technology and energy. She is a specialist for product strategies, business model innovations and high-value technology products.

Dr. Heike Riel is an IBM Fellow, head of Science & Technology and Lead of IBM Research Quantum Europe & Africa. She leads the research agenda and operation of the Science & Technology department with the aim to create scientific and technological breakthroughs in quantum computing and technologies, physics of artificial intelligence, nanoscience and nanotechnology and to explore new directions to computing. She is a distinguished expert in semiconductor electronic and optoelectronic devices, nanotechnology and nanosciences and focuses her research on advancing the frontiers of information technology through the physical sciences. Her research has contributed to advancements in OLED display technology, molecular electronics and semiconductor nanoscale materials and devices.

Dr. Riel received the master’s in physics from the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg and the PhD in physics from University of Bayreuth and an MBA from Henley Business College (UK). She has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and filed more than 50 patents.

She has received several prestigious honors, e.g., elected member of the Leopoldina – German National Academy of Sciences and the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences; she was awarded the APS David Adler Lectureship Award in the Field of Materials Physics, the Applied Physics Award of the Swiss Physical Society, and the 2022 IEEE Andrew S. Grove Award. She was honored as Fellow of the American Physical Society, and with an honorary doctorate by Lund University.

Prior to joining Rolls-Royce in November 2021, she spent almost 20 years at Airbus covering a broad range of operations across the company, in divisions from Commercial Aircraft, Defence and Space to Technology and Innovation. She was the first woman to be appointed to the Airbus executive committee as CTO.

Grazia has always led transnational and diverse teams. Beyond her expertise in future mobility and sustainable aerospace, she has maintained a forward-thinking interdisciplinary approach, promoting innovation through fields such as AI and quantum computing.

Grazia is a member of the Siemens supervisory board and the senate of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. She also serves as advisor at the German Center for Future Mobility (DZM) as well as at the department of Aerospace Science and Technology at the Politecnico di Milano (DAER). Furthermore, she was recently awarded the honorary Doctor of Science (D.Sc., post doc) by the renowned Cranfield University (UK).

Born in Italy, Grazia grew up between Milan and the USA. She holds a pilot’s license and graduated in aeronautical engineering from the Politecnico di Milano, where she specialized in Aerodynamics.

Alexander Kurz was born in 1961 in Süßen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. He studied law in Regensburg and Tübingen. After a legal internship in Tübingen, he passed the second state law examination, also in Tübingen. He then completed his doctorate on a part-time basis at the German University of Administrative Sciences in Speyer. From 1989 to 2000, he held various positions at the Karlsruhe Research Center, latterly as head of human resources and social affairs. He then moved to the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, where he was head of industrial services management and deputy head of the supplies procurement and logistics division until 2005.
From 2005 to 2007, he was administrative director at GSI and, in this capacity, was head of administration during establishment of the FAIR project. In December 2007, he moved back to the Karlsruhe Research Center to take up the position of administrative director and deputy chair of the management board. Following the establishment of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Alexander Kurz was appointed vice president for business affairs and finance and acting vice president for human resources and legal affaires.
Alexander Kurz is deputy chair of the Center for Research Management (ZWM) in Speyer.
He was the executive vice president for the Human Resources, Legal Affairs and IP Management unit at the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in Munich between 2011 and 2022. Starting from 2022, he has taken the position of senior vice president for the Innovation, Transfer and IP Management executive unit.

Since 2019, Prof. Anita Schöbel has been head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM in Kaiserslautern and professor of applied mathematics at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern.  Her current research focus lies in optimization, especially in robust optimization and applications for public transport. Here she leads the DFG research group 2083 "Integrated Planning in Public Transport" and is involved in numerous other projects.  In 2020, the Ministry of Science, Further Education and Culture appointed her as the “AI Pilot for Mobility of the State of Rheinland-Pfalz”. In addition, she holds numerous posts in committees and positions in the international community for applied mathematics. For example, she is vice president of the "Association of European Operational Research Societies" (EURO) and senator of the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI). For Fraunhofer, she coordinates the competence network "Quantum Computing" and is spokesperson for the "Next Generation Computing" research field.

Prof. Andreas Tünnermann is director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF and director of the Institute for Applied Physics at Friedrich Schiller University. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Helmholtz Institute in Jena. His path led Andreas Tünnermann from his doctorate and post-doctorate at the University of Hanover to the management of the "Research and Development" department at the Laser Center Hanover and, finally, to the professorship for applied physics at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. Today, the physicist leads one of the most creative and productive research groups in the field of photonics in the world. His research interests focus on fundamental principles as well as sophisticated technical aspects related to the generation and control of light. Recent research addresses the challenges of the second quantum revolution. Andreas Tuennermann is member of numerous national and international boards and committees and his research activities have been awarded with various prizes.

Prof. Karsten Buse is Director of Fraunhofer IPM. Associated with this position is the professorship for Optical Systems at the neighbouring Department of Microsystems Engineering IMTEK of the University of Freiburg. This has succeeded in establishing a link between university research and the industrial implementation of research results.

Since October 2019, Karsten Buse is chairman of the Fraunhofer Group for Light & Surfaces and member of the Presidential Council.

Prior to this, the expert in optical technologies was a professor at the University of Bonn, where he held the Heinrich Hertz endowed chair of Deutsche Telekom AG for more than 10 years. During this period, his main areas of research were in optical materials and non-linear optics. Buse developed new laser sources, optically parametric oscillators as well as optical sensors and filters. In his investigations, Buse attaches great importance to suitability for use in specific applications, as his numerous patents show. In addition to this, his cofounding of the Californian company Ondax – where he was a member of the management board for many years – testifies to his enormous experience in industry-related research and development.

Karsten Buse completed his undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the University of Osnabrück. In 1997, after finishing his habilitation thesis (post-doctoral degree) in the field of optical materials, he first went as a DFG postdoctoral research fellow to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, USA, where he was soon appointed »Visiting Professor«. Up until the year 2007 – at the same time as his activities in Bonn – this was where he pressed ahead with research in the field of optical data storage and ultra fast optical switches. 

Prof. Ronald Freund received the Dipl.-Ing. and Dr.-Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering from Technical University of Ilmenau, in 1993 and 2002, respectively. In 1997 he co-founded VPI Systems Inc. where he was involved in as Chief Technology Officer and Consultant, responsible for the development of design software for the physical layer of photonic networks as well as national and international research assignments. Since 1995, he is with the Heinrich Hertz Institute in Berlin, where he is currently leading the department Photonic Network and Systems with the focus on research in the fields of network design and modelling, high-capacity submarine and core networks, high-speed access networks as well as satellite and quantum communication systems. He has authored/co-authored more than 150 scientific publications. In 2017 he has been appointed Professor for Photonic Communication Systems at the Technical University of Berlin. He holds an MBA from RWTH Aachen.

Dr. Florian Fröwis is a quantum physicist by training (Ph.D. in 2012 from the University of Innsbruck) with several years of postdoc experience at the University of Geneva. He joined ID Quantique in 2018 to manage collaborative research projects, mainly with European academic and industry partners. In 2022, he was appointed as the general manager of ID Quantique Europe. He is now building up the Vienna-based company, including R&D and the sales office, with the mission to protect critical European infrastructure with Quantum Key Distribution (QKD).

Prof. Arnold Gillner studied physics at the University of Darmstadt and completed a doctorate in mechanical engineering at RWTH Aachen in 1994. He has been a scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT since 1985 and is currently head of the Ablation and Joining department.

He holds a professorship at RWTH and lectures on lasers in the life science and lasers in micro- and nanotechnology. Together with more than 60 scientists, he develops industrial laser processes for macro and micro joining technology, packaging, micro and nano structuring, polymer applications and life science applications.

New topics also include the development of manufacturing processes for quantum technology and AI-supported sensor technologies for laser processing. He is on the executive board of Photonics21, where he is working with industry and academia to develop the new research agenda for photonics topics at the European level. This is the coordinator of numerous national and international research projects and expert reviewer for various national and international research programs.

Dr. Jan Goetz is a quantum physicist and co-founding CEO of IQM, which builds next-generation quantum computers. IQM has assembled an exceptional team of international quantum experts who develop co-design quantum computers to tackle the hardest challenges of modern society. IQM's breakthroughs include pioneering on-chip components for ultra-fast processors and hardware-efficient solutions for application-specific computers. IQM has raised more than EUR 71 million in funding, including the largest seed investment round in Finnish history.

Dr. Jan Goetz did his doctorate on superconducting quantum circuits at the Technical University of Munich (Germany) and worked as a Marie Curie Fellow in Helsinki (Finland) at Aalto University, where he holds the title of docent. Capital magazine selected him as one of the 40 under 40 in Germany and he has received the prestigious entrepreneurship award from the KAUTE Foundation.

Prof. Christoph Günther is the director of the Institute of Communications and Navigation at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and holds a chair at Technische Universität München (TUM). He studied theoretical physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH), Switzerland, where he completed his PhD in 1984. He worked on cryptography, coding, communications, and information theory with Asea Brown Boveri, Ascom and Ericsson. At Ascom, he was responsible for the development of the first GSM and GSM/Satellite mobile phones of the company.

Prof. Günther has held his current positions since 2003/2004. The focus of his work at TUM is on precise positioning and sensor fusion for navigation. At DLR, his Institute employs around 200 people who work on four missions: “Global Connectivity”, “Global Navigation”, “Autonomy and Cooperation” as well as “Cybersecurity”. Free space optical links play an important role in the institute’s work. This applies to communications (many firsts, rate record: 13.6 Tbps over 10 km); navigation (Kepler system: time and frequency transfer and ranging); as well as to Quantum Key Distribution (world first mobile experiment, together with LMU in 2011). The overall scope ranges from fundamental work, e.g. on random access, error correction, equalization, parameter/position/attitude/time estimation and jammer suppression to the conception of new systems for aeronautical, maritime, railway or pedestrian communications and navigation as well as to new approaches to planetary exploration (using swarms). An important additional aspect of the work is the test and demonstration of the institute’s proposals involving, satellites, aircraft, ships, trains and pedestrians, as well as their standardization and their broadest possible utilization. Examples of standards relate to aeronautical or maritime communications being standardized at the ICAO and IMO in order to promote their worldwide utilization.

Manfred Hauswirth is the managing director (CEO) of the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS) and a full professor for “Open Distributed Systems” at the Technical University Berlin. Before he had been deputy director of the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI, now DSI) and a professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

His research is on distributed information systems, Internet of Things, data stream processing and Linked Data, semantics and AI. He has won several international awards for his work in these areas and is active in many scientific and political committees around digitization.

He is a director and principal investigator in the Weizenbaum Institute, the German Internet Institute, and a principal investigator in the Einstein Center Digital Future (ECDF), in the Berlin Big Data Center (BBDC) and in the Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD). Manfred Hauswirth is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Services Computing and of the ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, a member of the IEEE Computer Society Conference Advisory Committee, partner in the Web Science Trust Network of Laboratories (WSTNet), and speaker of the competency network quantum computing of Fraunhofer, a director of the Fraunhofer Academy.

Dr. Bernd Jungbluth is head of the Strategic Mission Initiative for Quantum Technology at Fraunhofer ILT. As such, he is responsible for the direction of the program at the institute and is coordinating the establishment of the Center for Quantum Science and Engineering CQSE as a project for economic development in the Rhenish lignite mining region. In the EIN Quantum NRW quantum innovation network, he is a member of the steering committee with a focus on technology transfer. Additionally, he is a member of the European Quantum Internet Alliance and the Excellence Cluster ML4Q.

In his scientific career, Dr. Jungbluth is dedicated to the development of application-adapted lasers and frequency converters for industry and science at Fraunhofer ILT and has headed the working group Nonlinear Optics and Tunable Lasers since 2008. In recent years, he has focused on photonic quantum-enabling technologies, such as the development of particularly low-noise frequency converters for the Quantum Internet Demonstrator – in close collaboration with QuTech. Dr. Jungbluth completed his physics studies at RWTH Aachen University in 2000 and received his Ph.D. from the faculty of mechanical engineering in 2011.

Dr. Matthias Kabel received his Dipl. Math. degree in 2004 and his Ph.D. degree in 2007, both from the University of Hamburg, Germany. He joined the dDepartment of Flow and Material Simulation at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM in 2008. He has beenwas a visiting researcher of at Math2Market GmbH and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in 2014. Afterwards, he became team leader for “Lightweight Design and Insulating Materials“. The focus of this team is the functional design of fiber and particle reinforced lightweight components and insulating materials. Since 2020, he has additionally led the newly created “Quantum Computing" group in the Flow and Materials Simulation Ddepartment. With this group, he is working on the adaptation of material simulation algorithms to quantum computing within the framework of the Competence Center Quantum Computing Rhineland-Palatinate.

Prof. Svenja Knappe obtained her Ph.D. in physics and holds an adjunct associate professorship in the Neuroscience and Psychology department at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

She is also a co-founder of FieldLine Inc., which has developed multi-channel magnetometer systems for biomagnetic measurements.

Knappe’s work focuses on developing miniaturized quantum sensors and systems, with the aim of producing manufacturable, high-performance sensors for large- and small-scale applications. The use of microfabrication technologies and novel packaging processes are a central component in her approach. The interdisciplinary research includes investigations of novel spectroscopic methods, frequency control, and metrology, microfabrication and manufacturing technologies, and magnetic field imaging.

She is also active in the Fraunhofer lighthouse project “QMag” about quantum magnetometry.

Dr. Frank Kühnemann is the group manager for “Nonlinear Optics and Quantum Sensing” at Fraunhofer IPM. In addition, he teaches as a private lecturer at the Institute of Physics, Freiburg University.

The main theme of his professional career is “infrared laser spectroscopy for analytical purposes” including the development of laser sources and spectroscopic techniques as well as interdisciplinary application studies in fields like environmental sensing and life sciences.

Before joining Fraunhofer IPM in 2011, he gained extensive experience in research and teaching at the University of Chicago, Bonn University and the German University in Cairo.

At Fraunhofer IPM, one of his responsibilities is the development of the new area “Quantum sensing” that aims at utilizing quantum states of photons and atoms for sensing applications, including magnetometry and infrared metrology. Since 2018, he has been co-chair of the international annual workshop series “Sensing with quantum light.”

Prof. Wolfgang Lechner studied physics at the University of Vienna, where he received his PhD in the field of theoretical physics in 2009. After a PostDoc at the University of Amsterdam, he moved to the IQOQI of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Innsbruck (2012) where he worked in the group of Prof. Peter Zoller. In 2016, he became an assistant professor at the University of Innsbruck. With his habilitation at the University of Innsbruck in 2019, he became a tenured professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics. Prof. Lechner develops novel methods for quantum simulation and quantum computing and is best known for the invention of the LHZ (Lechner-Hauke-Zoller) quantum computing architecture.  

Wolfgang Lechner founded ParityQC GmbH in 2019 together with Magdalena Hauser, the University of Innsbruck and the Academy of Sciences. The company develops blueprints for quantum computers with a focus on disruptive applications such as solving optimization problems and machine learning.  

He has received numerous awards for his research, including the Loschmidt Prize (2011), Wallnöfer Prize (2015), Thirring Prize (2017), START Prize (2017), the Houska Prize (2019) and the Research Faculty Award by Google (2020). ParityQC recently received the Phönix Award and was named one of the most promising spin-offs by Nature. Wolfgang Lechner was among the 32 inventors who are building a better future as named by the magazine Wired. Prof. Lechner has published more than 40 papers, is frequently an invited speaker at international conferences and has filed 7 patents in the field of quantum computing. 

Florian Moll received his advanced degree in electrical engineering from the Jena University of Applied Sciences in 2006 and a M.Sc. in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in 2009. He has been a member of the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) Institute of Communications and Navigation since then. His field is free-space optical quantum communications and telecommunications for aircraft and satellites. His main research interests are the connections between LEO and GEO satellites, aircraft and ground stations, characterization of the propagation channel and optics design. He was and is involved in several research projects, as project leader and team member, dealing with classical and quantum communications. Since 2020, he has been the head of the Quantum Communications Systems research group.

Dr. Mathieu Munsch is CEO and a co-founder of Qnami. He holds an engineering degree from the ENS Grenoble INP and a doctorate from the Université Grenoble Alpes. Dr. Munsch worked as a scientist for the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and the University of Basel, where he developed new sources of quantum light and lasers. He is the author of over 15 papers in high profile publications such as Nature and the Physical Review. In 2017, Dr. Munsch created Qnami with the ambition to become a leader in the quantum sensor market. He is actively involved in the European Quantum Flagship program and the creation of a European quantum ecosystem.

Marco Paini is the Technology Partnerships Director, Europe at Rigetti. He currently manages the program to build the first commercial quantum computer in the UK – a collaboration of Rigetti, Oxford Instruments, Phasecraft, the University of Edinburgh and Standard Chartered, sponsored by Innovate UK. Marco Paini previously led quantum computing applications portfolio development of QxBranch, a quantum computing software company acquired by Rigetti in 2019. Prior to QxBranch, Marco Paini spent more than eighteen years with Accenture, where he held several roles in technology. In the last part of his career with Accenture, he oversaw the AI ecosystem and the development of the quantum computing offering for the Accenture UKI Financial Services Technology Advisory practice. Marco Paini studied physics at the University of Pavia, where he collaborated with the Quantum Information Theory Group of the University of Pavia.

Rüdiger Quay received the Diplom-degree in physics from Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH), Aachen, Germany, in 1997, and a second Diplom in economics in 2003 from Fernuniversität Hagen. In 2001 he received his doctoral degree in technical sciences (with honours) from the Technische Universität Wien, Vienna, Austria. In 2009 he received the venia legendi (habilitation) in microelectronics, again from the Technische Universität Wien. 

In 2001 he joined the Fraunhofer Institute of Applied Solid State Physics IAF in Freiburg in various positions. He is currently the executive director of Fraunhofer IAF and responsible for the business fields. Since 2020 he is also a Fritz-Hüttinger professor at the Department for Sustainable Systems Engineering (INATECH), Albert-Ludwig University, Freiburg, Germany. Prof. Quay has authored and coauthored over 300 refereed publications, three monographs and contributions to two further.

Ph.D., Prof. Vahid Sandoghdar is a pioneer in the field of Nano-Optics, which merges various methods and research areas to investigate fundamental issues in the interaction between light and matter at the nanometer scale.

His current research ranges from quantum optics, plasmonics and ultrahigh resolution microscopy to nanobiophysics. Sandoghdar obtained his bachelor’s in physics from the University of California at Davis in 1987 and doctorate in physics from Yale University in 1993. After a postdoctoral stay at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, he moved to the University of Konstanz in Germany where he started a new line of research to combine single molecule spectroscopy, scanning probe microscopy and quantum optics. In 2001, he accepted a chair at the Laboratory of Physical Chemistry at ETH in Zurich, Switzerland. In 2011, he became the director of the newly established Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen as well as the Alexander von Humboldt Professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.

Ph.D., Prof. Vahid Sandoghdar is the founder of the new Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin, a joint research center that aims to address questions in fundamental medical research by using physical and mathematical methodologies.

Dr. Julian Struck is a quantum physicist developing satellite-based quantum communication solutions for TESAT-Spacecom. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Hamburg in 2013, working on quantum simulation with ultracold atoms in optical lattices. Subsequently, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral fellow with a research focus on strongly interacting Fermi gases. From 2017 to 2021, he held a jJunior rResearch cChair at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, initiating and leading a research project on low-dimensional Fermi gases.

Dr. Nino Walenta has 15 years of experience in academic and industrial research and the development of secure Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) network systems and their components. Prior to joining Fraunhofer HHI in Berlin as project team leader for quantum technologies in December 2019, he worked as a principle research scientist for quantum technologies at Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus (Ohio), where one of his focus activities was leading the development of security-certifiable QKD Trusted Node network systems. In 2016, he joined the R&D team of ID Quantique in Geneva (Switzerland) as an QKD architect and project manager, where he was responsible for the development of the company's next generation commercial QKD network systems. In his current role, he is Fraunhofer HHI's project leader for the German "QuNet" project for developing systems for a secure nationwide government agency QKD network.

After his PhD at the TU Vienna Harald Weinfurter joined the Hahn-Meitner Institute, Berlin, and the RISØ research institute, Denmark, as post doc. 1991 he started in the group of Anton Zeilinger at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, experiments on the foundations of quantum physics and quantum information and finished his habilitation on quantum interferometry in 1996. Since 1999 he and his group at the LMU Munich work on experiments starting from studies on multi-particle entanglement, loophole free Bell-tests of local realism, quantum logic gates, all the way towards applications of quantum communication like entangling atomic quantum memories over tens of kilometers and developing integrated optics for quantum key distribution.

Dr. Martin Wölz gained extensive experience in industrializing optical semiconductors after receiving his degree in physics from the University of Göttingen in 2002. He joined Infineon Technologies to work in the development of power semiconductor packaging and led the first high-voltage SiC diode module project. He then went on to compound semiconductor epitaxy with Veeco Instruments, managing production system installs for the LED and laser diode industry. Martin Wölz earned a doctorate for research on nano-column shaped LEDs at the Paul-Drude-Institut Berlin in 2013. Later, while working for Jenoptik as an engineering group leader, he explored new markets for high-power laser diodes such as nuclear inertial fusion and automotive LiDAR. After a transition phase as a systems architect for mass-manufactured opto-electronic devices, he is now leading product management at Jena-Optronik and providing space electronics subsystems for satellite quantum communications.