DECODE QUANTUM

Sabrina Maniscalco is the CEO and cofounder of Algorithmiq, a startup developing quantum algorithms for applications in life sciences based in Helsinki. She is also a Professor of Quantum Information, Computing, and Logic at the University of Helsinki. ​Beforehand, she held academic positions in Sofia, Durban, Turku, and Edinburgh, before returning to Finland in 2014 to lead the Theoretical Physics Laboratory in Turku. She moved to the University of Helsinki in 2020, coinciding with the founding of Algorithmiq. ​She’s done research on noise in quantum devices, complex quantum systems, and quantum simulations.

Welcome to the 83rd episode of Decode Quantum, the quantum podcast where we like to get in depth in quantum science and technology, this time with Wilhelm Kaenders, the president and CTO of Toptica. Wilhelm Kaenders is the co-founder of Toptica, because he had one other co-founder. He is now its president and CTO. The company is a worldwide leader in lasers used in mostly the academic world, but also in some parts of the industry. Wilhelm did his PhD in quantum physics at the Institute of Quantum Optics in Hanover, in the group of Dieter Meschede. He was behind the technology of the group of Theodor Hänsch at the Max Planck Institute, who became the laureate of the Nobel Prize in physics exactly 20 years ago, 2005. He pioneered the business of tunable diode laser technology and contributed to the development of the technology of the optical frequency comb. He created Toptica in 1998, which is probably one of the oldest companies in the enabling tech for quantum technology. https://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/2025/decode-quantum-with-wilhelm-kaenders-from-toptica

Welcome to the 82th episode of Decode Quantum, this time, with Chris Ballance, the cofounder and CEO of Oxford Ionics. Chris Ballance is the cofounder and CEO of Oxford Ionics since its inception in 2019. His cofounder is Tom Harty who is the company’s CTO. Before that, he was a senior researcher at Oxford University, where he did his PhD between 2010 and 2015. Transcript : https://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/2025/decode-quantum-with-chris-ballance-from-oxford-ionics

Welcome to this 81st episode of Decode Quantum, or interviews around the world about quantum. Fanny Bouton andOlivier Ezratty were with Mathieu Munsch from QNAMI, the CEO. Mathieu Munsch is the CEO and co-founder of QNAMI, a Swiss startup located in Basel, specializing in NV-center quantum sensors. Born in France, he was first trained in optics semiconductors and spintronics before turning to research in quantum physics. After obtaining his PhD at the Institut Néel in Grenoble, he continued his postdoctoral work on the manipulation and detection of quantum dot single spins, particularly quantum dot single spins. At the University of Basel, he launched Qnami in 2017 to commercialize sensors that perform very high-resolution magnetic imaging.

Welcome to the 80th episode of the Decode Quantum podcast series. We are this time with Chris Langer from Quantinuum. This is one of the leading companies using trapped ions for the creation of quantum computers. Our guest Chris Langer is a Fellow at Quantinuum. He is their chair of the Technical Board and an advisor to the President and COO. Chris has a PhD in physics obtained in 2006 at the University of Colorado on trapped ions quantum computing under the supervision of David Wineland, Nobel laureate in physics in 2012, who was a guest of this very podcast in July 2024. Chris is a key contributor to the development of Quantinuum’s hardware. Before joining Quantinuum (which was then initially Honeywell Quantum Systems) in 2016, Chris worked for 10 years at Lockheed Martin on various projects in the aerospace domain.

Welcome to the 79th episode of “Decode Quantum”. We continue our “international episodes”, this times with the cofounders of the US startup EeroQ, Nick Farina and Johannes Pollanen, which aims to create qubits with electron spins, electrons being shielded from controlling electronic circuits by a layer of superfluid helium. This is the only company doing this. Nick Farina is the CEO and co-founder of EeroQ in 2017. Beforehand, he worked as an business angel investor, and an entrepreneur, launching multiple tech startups (GiftedHire for online job search, Voltage Digital a digital agency, JetZet providing itinerary management tools to business travelers). He’s the one bringing business acumen to the company. He is also a Quantum Computing Governance Member at the World Economic Forum since 2021. In 2000-2003, he was a caddie at a golf club (Biltmore Country Club) where he spent summers watching people cheat at golf and lament their losses in tech stocks. Johannes Pollanen is a co-founder and the Chief Science Officer of EeroQ. He is a researcher from Michigan State University (MSU) where he holds the Cowen chair of Distinguished Chair in Experimental Physics. He is also Associate Director of the MSU Center for Quantum Computing Science and Engineering. He runs the Laboratory for Hybrid Quantum Systems, which is focused on hybrid quantum technologies involving superconducting qubits, superfluids, trapped electrons, and other condensed matter systems. He developed the EeroQ electrons on superfluid helium architecture. He did his PhD at Northwestern University with Bill Halperin and contributed to the discovery of new quantum phases in superfluid helium-3, which influenced his later work in designing quantum computing platforms. He then was a post-doc at Caltech, with Jim Eisenstein, working on exotic many-body states in ultra-clean semiconductor systems. And as usual the transcript : https://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/2025/decode-quantum-with-nick-farina-and-johannes-pollanen-from-eeroq

Welcome to the 78th episode of Decode Quantum, where we continue to travel around the world. We are now in the UK with Sebastian Weidt, the founder and CEO of Universal Quantum, a startup creating scalable trapped-ions quantum computers. Sebastian Weidt is the CEO and co-founder of Universal Quantum since 2019, when the company was created. He is also a professor of quantum computing and entrepreneurship at the University of Sussex, which is in Brighton, south of London, near the Channel. He was a lecturer on quantum technology at this university. He was a postdoc research fellow at the same university between 2013 and 2015, and since 2015, a senior scientist in the trapped-ion group led by Winfried Hensinger. Transcrit and details : https://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/2024/decode-quantum-with-sebastian-weidt-from-universal-quantum

Welcome to the 77th episode of “Decode Quantum”. We continue our “international episodes”, this times with the cofounders of the US startup SEEQC,John Levy (CEO) and Oleg Mukhanov (CTO), who are creating superconducting control electronic circuits for solid state qubits. They are the only company in that field. We had a chance to meet our two guests in Elmsford in February this year and visit their lab and cleanroom. John Levy is the CEO and cofounder of SEEQC in 2019. Beforehand, he was the chairman of Hypres, the company that spun-out SEEQC for reasons he’ll explain later. He was involved in various startups, like goTenna, and BioLite. He has been an investor and executive in the tech industry, having co-founded and led the tech practice at the venture capital firm L Capital Partners where he served on boards of over twelve tech companies. John took 3 companies public and oversaw numerous M&A transactions. During the 1990’s he co-founded the computer vision company ePlanet which spun out of Interval Research, sponsored by Paul Allen, and ran the company for Intel, its main investor. John is a graduate of the Harvard Business School. Oleg Mukhanov, is a cofounder and the CTO of SEEQC. He was before the CTO of Hypres since 1991, where he led developments in superconducting electronics. Oleg is a co-inventor of the Rapid Single Flux Quantum (RSFQ) technology, a superconducting circuit used for high-speed, energy-efficient computation useful for both classical and quantum processors. He did his PhD in Russia with Konstantin Likharev in the late 1980s, at Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU), before moving to the US at the end of the USSR.

Welcome to the 76th episode of Decode Quantum. In our series of episodes recorded in Lindau where dozens of physics Nobel laureates meet with young scientists, we picked a few of them who are specialized in the broad field of quantum computing to head their thoughts about it, Caroline Tornow, Francesca Pietracaprina, Yaroslav Herasymenko and Adam Shaw. This podcast was recorded on July 1st, 2024, in Lindau, Germany during the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings 2024 with Fanny Bouton (OVHcloud) and Olivier Ezratty. Caroline Tornow is from ETH Zurich and just started a PhD in the Condensed Matter Theory and Metamaterials group. Beforehand, during her Master’s in Quantum Engineering at ETH, she worked in the Quantum Computational Science group at IBM Research Zurich and the Quantum Information Theory group at ETH. She therefore has some ideas on where we are with regards to the maturity of quantum computing in general, and, we would guess, also with superconducting qubits. Francesca Pietracaprina is a software engineer and researcher at Algorithmiq, a quantum computing software company based in Helsinki Finland. She did her PhD in between statistical and quantum physics and two postdocs in Rome and Toulouse where she focused on localization in quantum systems, a phenomenon that involves a breakdown on thermalization in presence of strong disorder. She then obtained a Marie Curie fellowship with which she moved to Dublin and continued her research on quantum disordered systems and quantum thermodynamics. At Algorithmiq, she is focused on creating full stack solutions for drug discovery and simulation. Yaroslav Herasymenko is a post-doc at TU Delft and at QuSoft in Amsterdam. He did his PhD at the University of Leiden. He currently works on the development of fermionic (in other words, of electrons) quantum simulations. He started to work in condensed matter theory and then became interested in math and computing methods of condensed matter. It drove him to the field of quantum computing. He is a native from Kyiv, Ukraine. Adam Shaw has a PhD in physics in 2024 from Caltech, where he studied quantum computing with Rydberg atom arrays. He is part of the team who broke recent records with the control of 6,100 atoms using lasers, working on both experimental and theoretical aspects to these systems, working on gate fidelities, large scale quantum simulation, and showing how certain quantum errors can be erased. He is now a post-doc at Stanford, still working on cold-atoms computing. More details and transcript on : https://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/decode-quantum-with-young-scientists-at-lindau

Welcome to the 75th episode of the Decode Quantum podcast. In our series of episodes recorded in Lindau where dozens of physics Nobel laureates met with young scientists, we had a chance to meet Bill Phillips, who is one of them, after the first episode with David Wineland. This podcast was recorded on July 1st, 2024, in Lindau, Germany during the 73rd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting 2024. Bill Phillips is American physicist from the same generation as Alain Aspect. He got his PhD in physics at the MIT working on nuclear magnetic resonance on the magnetic moment of the proton in H2O. He later did some work with Bose–Einstein condensates and then worked at NIST. There, he developed (actually, used) a technique to trap cold atoms in vacuum using lasers, called the Magneto-Optical Trap (MOT), in connection with an idea from Jean Dalibard, who was our previous guest. Bill is also a professor of physics at the University of Maryland. He was a laureate from the Nobel prize in physics in 1997 along with Steven Chu and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, at the relatively early age of 49, by today’s standards. It was for his work on the Zeeman slower and other techniques related to the cooling and trapping of atoms. He was also participating in the panel on the future of quantum computing with Olivier Ezratty at the Lindau conference. By the way, his mother was Italian, and he happens to speak French. The transcript from the podcast published on Olivier Ezratty’s website has been edited by Bill Phillips and Olivier Ezratty. It is slightly different from the podcast audio recording to clarify the discussion content. https://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/2024/decode-quantum-with-bill-phillips

Welcome to the 75th episode of the Decode Quantum podcast. In our series of three episodes recorded in Lindau where dozens of physics Nobel laureates were gathered with young scientists, we had a chance to meet David Wineland. This podcast was recorded on July 1st, 2024, in Lindau, Germany during the 73rd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. David Wineland is an American physicist currently at the University of Oregon who is specialized in atomic physics, and in particular, uses laser-cooled trapped ions to implement the elements of quantum-computing. He became a laureate of the Nobel prize in physics in 2012 along with Serge Haroche of Ecole Normale Supérieure and Collège de France, Paris. He received his PhD in physics from Harvard University in 1970 on a topic we’ll see later in our discussion. He was then a post-doc at the University of Washington where he worked on electrons in ion traps. In 1975, he joined the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) where he created a group working on ion storage and was also an academic at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He and his colleagues were among the first {laser cooling was demonstrated at the same time by the group of Peter Toschek in Heidelberg} to laser-cool ions in 1978 and then demonstrated other optical techniques to control ions and implement the first two-qubit logic gate in 1995. He and colleagues also worked on the creation of the most precise atomic clock using quantum logic on a single aluminum ion in 2019. The 2005 experiment was the first demonstration of quantum-logic spectroscopy. The most precise quantum logic clock using an Al+ (aluminum) ion was demonstrated in 2019. This work later contributed to the creation of trapped ion quantum computers from the companies IonQ and Quantinuum. The transcript from the podcast published on Olivier Ezratty’s website has been edited by David Wineland and Olivier Ezratty. It is slightly different from the podcast audio recording to clarify the discussion content. https://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/2024/decode-quantum-with-david-wineland

Nous voici dans le 73e épisode des entretiens Decode Quantum, toujours avec Fanny Bouton et moi-même. Nous recevons aujourd’hui Jean Dalibard, un (grand) physicien français spécialiste d'optique quantique et du contrôle des atomes. Jean Dalibard est un physicien français spécialisé en mécanique quantique, professeur au Collège de France et qui a été professeur à l'École polytechnique pendant 25 ans, chercheur au LKB de l'ENS et membre de l'Académie des sciences. Il est issu de l’ENS Paris et de l'université Paris-VI. Il passe un doctorat de troisième cycle sous la direction de Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. Alors qu’il vient d’obtenir l’agrégation de physique en 1981, il devient scientifique du contingent à l'Institut d'optique dans l'équipe d'Alain Aspect où il participe à ses travaux sur les inégalités de Bell en compagnie de Philippe Grangier et Gérard Roger. Comme attaché de recherche au CNRS, il passe un doctorat d'État à l'université Paris-VI en 1986, toujours sous la direction de Claude Cohen-Tannoudji.

Welcome to the 71th episode of Decode Quantum, and a new one in English after Jay Gambetta from IBM. This time, Fanny Bouton and Olivier Ezratty host Jan Goetz, the CEO of IQM, the famous Finish superconducting qubits startup.Jan Goetz is the CEO and cofounder of IQM which was launched in 2019. Before that, he got his PhD at TUM (Technical University of Munich) in 2016. He conducted his work as a researcher at Walther-Meissner-Institute (WMI) in Germany (Garching, near Munich) working on the characterization of superconducting circuits. After that, he was a post-doc at Aalto University, Finland, from 2017 to 2019 and a Marie Curie fellow. All his history in research is around superconducting qubits as we’ll discover.

Ségolène Olivier dirige le programme de photonique quantique au CEA-Leti pour des applications en communications quantiques et en calcul quantique. Elle a obtenu son doctorat en 2002 à l'Université de Paris dans le domaine de l'optoélectronique et a été embauchée au CEA-Leti en 2003 en tant que post-doc puis en 2005 comme ingénieure de recherche et développement en processus et dispositifs. Elle a développé son expertise dans divers domaines tels que la photonique intégrée en III-V, les interconnexions microélectroniques et le stockage de données optiques avant de rejoindre le laboratoire de photonique sur silicium en 2012. Elle a dirigé plusieurs projets collaboratifs dans le développement de composants photoniques passifs et actifs en silicium, des lasers hybrides III-V sur silicium et des émetteurs intégrés sur silicium pour les applications télécom. Depuis 2020, Ségolène coordonne l’activité de photonique quantique au Leti.

Welcome to the 71th episode of Decode Quantum, and a new one in English after Jay Gambetta from IBM. This time, Fanny Bouton and Olivier Ezratty host Jan Goetz, the CEO of IQM, the famous Finish superconducting qubits startup. Jan Goetz is the CEO and cofounder of IQM which was launched in 2019. Before that, he got his PhD at TUM (Technical University of Munich) in 2016. He conducted his work as a researcher at Walther-Meissner-Institute (WMI) in Germany (Garching, near Munich) working on the characterization of superconducting circuits. After that, he was a post-doc at Aalto University, Finland, from 2017 to 2019 and a Marie Curie fellow. All his history in research is around superconducting qubits as we’ll discover.

Dans le 70e épisode des entretiens Decode Quantum, Fanny Bouton et Olivier Ezratty sont avec Valentin Savin du CEA-Leti, pour parler du sujet de la correction d’erreurs.Valentin Savin a un master en mathématiques de l’ENS Lyon et de l’Université Joseph Fourier de Grenoble, puis a réalisé une thèse de doctorat dans cette même université en 2001. Entre 2002 et 2004, il était post-doc à l’Institut de Mathématiques de l’académie roumaine. Depuis 2005, il est au CEA-LETI à Grenoble, d’abord comme post-doc puis comme chercheur. Ses recherches portent sur les codes de correction d’erreurs classiques et quantiques, à la fois pour les communications, pour le stockage de données et pour le calcul. Il copilote de nombreux projets de recherche collaborative européens dans le domaine, notamment pour créer des systèmes quantiques à tolérance de pannes.

In their third Decode Quantum episode in English after Simone Severini from AWS and Tommaso Calarco from Julich, Fanny Bouton and Olivier Ezratty are with Jay Gambetta from IBM. And he welcomed them since they recorded this episode near his office at IBM Yorktown Heights Research lab in New York state. This is the 68th episode of Decode Quantum. Jay Gambetta is a quantum physicist. Born in Australia, he did his thesis there at Griffith University in a quantum foundations theme. He then worked on superconducting qubits as a post-doc at Yale University and the Institute of Quantum Computing of Waterloo University in Ontario, Canada. He then joined IBM in 2011 and became in 2019 the VP in charge of all things quantum computing: hardware, software and business development. He is also an American Physical Society fellow, an IEEE fellow, and an IBM fellow.

Dans ce 67ème épisode de Decode Quantum, Fanny Bouton et Olivier Ezratty accueillent Grégoire Ribordy qui dirige la société IDQ.Grégoire Ribordy est cofondateur et PDG d’IDQ, ou ID quantique, l’une des sociétés les plus anciennes des technologies quantiques avec D-Wave, créée en 2001. Avant cette création, il était chercheur dans le Groupe de Physique Appliquée de l'Université de Genève entre 1997 et 2001 où il a développé la technologie de cryptographie quantique (QKD) avec plusieurs brevets à la clé dans le domaine. Auparavant, entre 1995 et 1996, il avait travaillé dans la division R&D de Nikon à Tokyo. Avec lui nous allons faire un grand tour historique, technologique et mondial sur l’histoire de la QRNG et de la QKD.

Dans ce 66ème épisode de Decode Quantum, Olivier Ezratty accueille Tommaso Calarco du Forschungszentrum Jülich en Allemagne. C'est le deuxième épisode de Decode Quantum en anglais après celui avec Simone Severini d'AWS, publié en mai 2023.Tommaso Calarco est un véritable Européen à bien des égards. Né en Italie, il a fait ses études dans ce pays, d'abord avec une maîtrise en musique. Il s'est ensuite tourné vers la science avec une maîtrise en physique de l'Université de Padoue et un doctorat à l'Université de Ferrare. Il a ensuite travaillé dans de nombreux endroits : l'Université d'Innsbruck et l'ECT Trento pour deux post-docs, puis le NIST et Harvard aux États-Unis, l'Université d'Ulm, l'Université de Cologne en Allemagne, l'Université de Bologne en Italie, et enfin à Julich. Il a également été rédacteur en chef du European Physics Journal D. En tant que chercheur principal au centre de recherche de Jülich, il est spécialisé dans le contrôle quantique, appliqué à divers objets quantiques : atomes froids, ions, supraconducteurs et même centres NV.Il est également bien connu pour être l'auteur principal et le coordinateur du Manifeste Quantique Européen qui a conduit au lancement du Flagship Quantique Européen de 1B€ en 2018. Il dirige le Réseau Communautaire Quantique de chercheurs européens en physique quantique, qui aide à définir l'Agenda Stratégique de Recherche de l'UE.

Dans ce 65e épisode des entretiens Decode Quantum, Fanny Bouton et Olivier Ezratty reçoivent Audrey Cottet et Takis Kontos qui sont tous deux directeurs de recherche au CNRS, officiant au LPENS de l’École Normale Supérieure de Paris. Il y évoquent l'histoire des qubits supraconducteurs, les qubits à base de nanotubes de carbone ainsi que la détection de matière noire.