Guido Burkard is a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Konstanz. His research is devoted to the physics of quantum computing, specifically on systems that can efficiently store, process, and transmit quantum information, with focus on solid-state and hybrid quantum systems. After obtaining his PhD in physics from the University of Basel, Burkard worked at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center before joining the faculty at the University of Basel, RWTH Aachen University, and the University of Konstanz. Burkard is currently serving as chair of the quantum information division of the German physical society (DPG).

Klaus Ensslin has been Professor of Solid-​State Physics at ETH Zurich since October 1995. His research focuses on the physics of mesoscopic systems. The electronic properties of novel semiconductor nanostructures are investigated using material control down to the atomic scale including graphene and other 2D materials. One important goal is the ever increasing control and improved understanding of the quantum properties of electrons in nanostructures in view of a future quantum information processor. He served as a director of the National Center of Competence on “Quantum Science and Technology” 2011-2022.

Alexander is the head of the bosonic quantum information group at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland. He obtained his PhD for research done between 2011 and 2015 in the group of Max Hofheinz at CEA Grenoble. From 2016 to 2019 he was part of the group of Michel Devoret at Yale University as a postdoctoral associate, working on bosonic quantum error correction. There, he demonstrated the stabilization and operation of a ‘’Kerr-cat qubit’’, a bosonic qubit based on superpositions of coherent states. In 2022, he received the Nicholas Kurti prize for his contributions to the field of quantum information processing with non-linear effects in Josephson junctions.

Professor Jelena Klinovaja is a physicist at the University of Basel working on condensed matter theory and quantum computing. Her research focuses on topological effects and spin phenomena, especially in topological insulators, carbon-based systems, atomic chains, semiconducting 2DEGs, and nanowires. She studies the properties of existing structures and also works to ‘engineer’ new systems with exotic quantum properties, such as strong electron-electron interactions. Klinovaja is Deputy Co-Director of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research: Spin Qubits in Silicon.

Daniel Loss received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at the University of Zürich in 1985. After a postdoc in Urbana (with AJ Leggett) and at IBM in New York, he joined SFU in Vancouver and then University of Basel, where he is full Professor since 1996. Since 2012, he also heads a team at RIKEN. He established the field of spin-based quantum computing. He received several distinctions, including the Marcel Benoist Prize and the King Faisal International Prize in Science. He is an APS Fellow, member of the Leopoldina, and External Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society. He is co-director of the Swiss national center on quantum computing (NCCR SPIN).

Pasquale Scarlino completed his Ph.D. in 2016 at TU Delft, under the guidance of Prof. L.M.K. Vandersypen, focusing on Si/SiGe spin qubits. He later conducted post-doctoral research at ETH Zurich’s Quantum Device Lab led by Prof. A. Wallraff. During this period, he collaborated with Profs. K. Ensslin and T. Ihn, exploring the integration of semiconductor-superconductor quantum platforms. From June 2019 to September 2020, he worked as a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Station Q Copenhagen. Since November 2020, he has served as a tenure track Assistant Professor of Physics at EPFL, establishing the Hybrid Quantum Circuit (HQC) lab to advance superconducting-semiconducting hybrid quantum technology.

Andreas Wallraff is Full Professor for Solid-State Physics in the Department of Physics at ETH Zurich. His work focuses on the experimental investigation of quantum effects in superconducting electronic circuits for fundamental quantum optics experiments and for applications in quantum information processing. His group at ETH Zurich researches micro- and nano-electronics as well as hybrid quantum systems combining superconducting electronic circuits with semiconductor quantum dots, making use of fast and sensitive microwave techniques at ultra-low temperatures.

Stefan Willitsch is a professor of Chemical Physics at the University of Basel. His research focuses on the development of quantum technologies for molecular systems with applications in precision measurements, sensing and chemical-reaction studies. In his various academic roles, he recently served as President of the Division of Fundamental Research of the Swiss Chemical Society, as coordinator for the development of an infrastructure for precision-frequency transfer in Switzerland and as editor of the journal Molecular Physics.

Dr. habil. James Wootton received his PhD from the University of Leeds in 2010, for work on the use of topologically ordered systems for quantum computing. He then worked on topological quantum error correcting codes at the University of Basel until 2018.

Since 2016, when IBM Quantum first put quantum computing hardware on the cloud, Wootton’s research has focused on the use of current and near-term devices. He has focused on proof-of-principle demonstrations of quantum error correction, benchmarking, uses-cases for procedural generation, and outreach. He joined IBM Quantum in 2018, working at IBM Research in Zurich.

Professor Dominik Zumbuhl is an experimental physicist at the University of Basel. His lab conducts quantum transport experiments in semiconductor nanostructures, investigating quantum coherence, electron interactions, electron, hole and nuclear spins and their interactions, working towards quantum computing with spins. He obtained his PhD at Harvard, diploma at ETH Zürich and an MSc from Stanford. In 2006, he started his own group at the University of Basel, and won an ERC starting grant in the first call. Since 2021, he is the director of the NCCR SPIN, the Swiss National Program on Quantum Computing with Si and Ge spins.

Keisuke Fujii is a Professor of Graduate School of Engineering Science at Osaka University, a Deputy Director of Center for Quantum Information and Quantum Biology (QIQB) at Osaka University, and a Team Leader at RIKEN Center for Quantum Computing (RQC). He earned his PhD in Engineering in 2011 from Kyoto University. After working at Kyoto University and University of Tokyo, he joined Osaka University in 2019 and was honored as a distinguished professor in 2023. His research spans a wide range of topics within quantum computing, including theoretical aspects and software development for near-term applications as well as fault-tolerant quantum computing.

Akira Furusawa received his MS degree in applied physics and Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry from The University of Tokyo, Japan, in 1986 and 1991, respectively. His research interests cover the area of nonlinear optics, quantum optics, and quantum information science. He is currently Professor of Applied Physics, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo and the Deputy Director of RIKEN Center for Quantum Computing. Professor Furusawa has authored more than 100 papers in leading technical journals and conferences, which include the first realization of continuous-variable quantum teleportation, which was achieved in 1998 at California Institute of Technology as a visiting scientist at Professor Jeff Kimble’s lab.

Dr. Hayato Goto is a Senior Fellow at Toshiba Corporation, where he leads the Quantum Computer Group and investigates not only quantum computers based on superconducting circuits but also quantum-inspired algorithms for combinatorial optimization. He is also a Team Leader at RIKEN Center for Quantum Computing, where he leads the Quantum Computer Architecture Research Team and his focus is on the theory of fault-tolerant quantum computation.

Hideo Kosaka is the director of the Quantum Information Research Center and a professor at Yokohama National University. He is also a Research Fellow of the Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo. After graduating from Kyoto University, he worked at NEC for 15 years and then became an associate professor at Tohoku University and then a full professor at Yokohama National University. He is currently the program manager of the Moonshot Project for the development of quantum computer networks and the leader of the MIC Project for the development of quantum repeater networks.

Mio Murao received B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Ochanomizu University in Tokyo, Japan in 1991, 1993 and 1996, respectively.  She worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University (US), Imperial College, London (UK), and RIKEN (Japan).  She became an associate professor in 2001 and a professor in 2015 in the Department of Physics, the School of Science, the University of Tokyo. She has been working in the field of theoretical quantum information science since 1997 and is currently focusing on quantum programming, quantum algorithms, quantum learning, and distributed quantum computation.

Atsushi Noguchi is Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo, and Team Leader of Riken Center for Quantum Computing. He is working on quantum hybrid technologies with superconducting circuits. Superconducting technologies help not only as superconducting qubits, but also as low-loss electric circuits. In his lab, several kinds of hardware are experimentally investigated including superconducting qubits, superconducting ion traps, and electron Paul traps.

Kenji Ohmori is a Chair Professor at the Institute for Molecular Science, National Institutes of Natural Sciences, Japan. Professor Ohmori is currently leading large-scale/long-term projects on the development of ultrafast quantum simulators and quantum computers with ultracold atom arrays (2018-2030) supported by the MEXT and Cabinet Office of the government of Japan. He has been celebrated with many honors. Highlights include the Japan Academy Medal (2007), Fellow of the American Physical Society (2009), Humboldt Research Award from the government of Germany (2012), Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of MEXT (2018), and the National Medal with Purple Ribbon, by His Majesty the Emperor of Japan for his achievements on quantum physics (2021).

Picture ©Katsuhiko Hori

Ryuji Takagi is an associate professor in the Department of Basic Science at the University of Tokyo, where he leads a research group in quantum information theory. His research interests lie in the quantitative understanding of the power of quantum resources in quantum information processing tasks, and how those quantities provide insights into operational aspects of quantum mechanics and related physical phenomena. He received a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was a Lee Kuan Yew research fellow at Nanyang Technological University Singapore, where he developed general frameworks of quantum resource theories and quantum error mitigation.

Seigo Tarucha received the phD degree from the Tokyo University in 1986 after he joined NTT Research Laboratories in 1978. He moved to the Tokyo University as a professor in Physics in 1998 and in Applied Physics in 2005. In 2019, he retired from the University and moved to RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science. He has been running a research group since 2013 and additionally a research team in Center for Quantum Computing since 2021. He is working on spin-based quantum computing. He received Nishina award in 2002, National medal with purple ribbon in 2004, Leo Esaki award in 2007, and Fujiwara Award in 2023.

Michihisa Yamamoto received his B. Sc. (1999), M. Sc. (2001), and Ph.D. (2004) in physics from the University of Tokyo. He was a research associate (2004-2014) and a lecturer (2014-2017) in the Department of Applied Physics and an associate professor (2017-2018) in Quantum-Phase Electronics Center at the University of Tokyo. He was a unit leader (2017-2020) and is a team leader since April 2020 at RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science. He is also a professor in Quantum-Phase Electronics Center at the University of Tokyo since July 2023.

Naoki Yamamoto received the B.S. degree in engineering and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in information physics and computing from The University of Tokyo in 1999, 2001, and 2004, respectively. From 2003 to 2007, he was a Research Fellow at the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology from 2004 to 2007, and at the Australian National University from 2007 to 2008. He is currently a Professor at the Department of Applied Physics and Physico-Informatics, Keio University, and the chair of Keio Quantum Computing Center. His research interests include quantum computation and control.

Filippo Fratini, PhD in Theoretical Physics and Master of Arts in Quantitative Finance, conducted research in nuclear and atomic Physics, nanotechnology and foundations of quantum mechanics, for eight years. He is lecturer of monte-carlo simulations and stochastic methods at the University of Applied Sciences BFI in Vienna. Within Erste Group Bank, he is leading the quantum team delivering solutions and business value.

Dr. Heike Riel is IBM Fellow, Head of the Science & Technology, and Lead of IBM Research Quantum Europe & Africa. She leads the Science of Quantum & Information Technologies department aiming 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. She 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. She has authored more than 155 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. In February 2022 she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Jelena is a physicist and an expert in quantum, nanotechnology, and material science with PhD from Florida State University in the USA. She held a postdoctoral position at the University of Basel, Switzerland before joining Zurich Instruments in 2012 as Applications and Business Development Manager for Quantum Technologies. In 2023 she joined QuantrolOx as a Director of Business Development.

At IonQ, Noam Zakay is Managing Director, currently leading IonQ EMEA. With his extensive expertise, Noam drives the establishment of groundbreaking partnerships and the commercialization of IonQ’s cutting-edge quantum technologies. In this pivotal role, Noam spearheads the initiation of collaborations, amplifying IonQ’s commercial presence and influence in Europe.

Over the course of his impressive 30-year career, Noam has held key positions within renowned organizations, where he focused on catalyzing new business opportunities, defining strategic missions, and implementing innovative strategies. His exceptional negotiation skills and deal-making acumen earned him the prestigious Master Deal Maker certification from INSEAD. Noam has a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering, earned with honors from the University of South Florida, Tampa.

Normann is a theoretical physicist with a PhD in quantum chaos. Fate brought him to Japan, where he joined Hitachi Ltd. in 2017 to work on CMOS annealing. Since 2020 Normann works as a manager and quantum researcher at the Hitachi Cambridge lab – coordinating research on spin qubits and quantum algorithms between Hitachi’s quantum research teams in Tokyo and Cambridge.