Baratz’s contribution is organizational and product-focused. D-Wave identifies him as the executive who previously led research and development and product delivery, and as its chief executive since 2020. The company’s computing offering combines annealing hardware, cloud access, development tools and hybrid solvers. This makes his work relevant to the practical question of how researchers and organizations gain access to quantum resources. The profile credits leadership of that development effort without assigning him sole authorship of the hardware or treating company performance claims as independently proven computational advantage.
Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Innsbruck · Austria
Blatt advanced trapped-ion quantum computing through experiments on entanglement and coherent control, and helped take the Innsbruck approach into commercial hardware through AQT.
Blatt’s career connects precise atomic control with the challenge of assembling a quantum computer. The Innsbruck team’s creation of large entangled ion states demonstrated coordinated control while exposing how correlated noise grows with system size. His cofounding of Alpine Quantum Technologies then linked that laboratory expertise to a company building trapped-ion systems for users beyond the original research group. The common thread is engineering quantum information with individually controlled ions. His current institutional identification is emeritus research director, and team results are credited as collaborations throughout this profile.
An executive whose quantum-sector contribution centers on IonQ’s public-market transition and corporate leadership, connecting technology development with financing, partnerships and organizational execution.
De Masi belongs in this edition for a business-building role rather than a claimed scientific invention. He led the special-purpose acquisition company involved in IonQ’s public listing and subsequently became IonQ’s chief executive and chairman. These are consequential organizational positions in a capital-intensive field. His profile therefore focuses on documented transaction and leadership responsibilities, while the design and performance of IonQ hardware remain achievements attributable to the company’s research and engineering teams.
A silicon-quantum-computing researcher and company founder whose work connects two-qubit logic in silicon with efforts to develop processors using semiconductor manufacturing approaches.
Dzurak’s contribution centers on making silicon a controllable quantum-computing medium and pursuing its commercial development. He coauthored an experimental two-qubit gate using electron spins in silicon quantum dots, an important step beyond isolated single-qubit operation. As Diraq’s founder and chief executive, he also directs a company pursuing silicon-based processors. The significance lies in this connection between a demonstrated building block and an engineering program; large-scale performance remains something to demonstrate.
A superconducting-quantum-computing researcher and IBM research leader whose work includes the transmon proposal and leadership of programs connecting quantum processors with software developers.
Gambetta’s work spans the physical design of quantum processors and the systems used to make them accessible. He coauthored the transmon proposal, contributing to a device design that reduced charge-noise sensitivity. IBM also identifies his leadership in cloud quantum computing and Qiskit development. The profile therefore connects a specific research contribution with an organizational role in building a developer ecosystem, while preserving the distinction between his work and the collective output of IBM teams.
United States Department of Energy · United States
A science and technology executive whose quantum-sector work spans IBM research leadership and a United States Department of Energy agenda for scientifically useful quantum computing.
Gil’s contribution is institutional: directing research organizations and shaping the conditions under which quantum technology is developed. His earlier IBM leadership included the company’s cloud-accessible quantum-computing effort. At the Department of Energy, he has commissioned planning for scientific quantum-computing capability and potential user infrastructure. These responsibilities influence research priorities and access, but neither a corporate title nor a policy roadmap constitutes proof that a proposed machine or performance target has already been achieved.
A quantum-computing entrepreneur who cofounded IQM and leads its work on superconducting systems, with an emphasis on installations connected to research and supercomputing infrastructure.
Goetz’s role is to build an organization capable of turning superconducting-quantum research into systems that institutions can operate. He cofounded IQM in 2018 and represented the company in the Q-Exa consortium, which planned integration with the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre’s environment. His contribution is therefore best understood through company formation, partnerships and infrastructure delivery. Technical specifications and scientific results remain attributable to the relevant teams and require their own evidence.
Hazra leads Quantinuum’s commercial and industrial development, connecting trapped-ion computing with the manufacturing partnerships and cloud infrastructure needed to make quantum systems broadly usable.
Hazra represents the organizational work needed to turn an experimental computing platform into an operating business. He leads a company developing trapped-ion hardware alongside software and applications. Its announced work with Quanta addresses manufacturability, while its Oracle partnership targets hybrid cloud access. His inclusion concerns executive leadership and industry coordination; the technical results belong to the teams that produced them, and announced future services remain plans until delivered.
Heijman helped organize the Netherlands’ quantum ecosystem, connecting national strategy, research institutions, companies and shared facilities through Quantum Delta NL and House of Quantum.
Quantum programs depend on institutions as well as instruments. Heijman’s documented contribution is building connections among research, industry, education and government in the Netherlands. The International Year of Quantum profile credits her with helping initiate and shape the national program; her World Economic Forum biography records cofounding Quantum Delta NL and House of Quantum. Together these activities address the coordination and infrastructure that allow scientific capabilities to become a sustained ecosystem for research and commercialization.
Director, Quantum Science Center; Distinguished Scientist, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge National Laboratory · United States
Humble connects quantum processors with scientific computing, developing hybrid-system models and helping researchers gain merit-based access to emerging hardware through Oak Ridge’s quantum user program.
Humble works at the boundary between quantum devices and the larger computing systems that scientists use. His research models the interfaces, timing and energy demands of hybrid execution rather than considering quantum gates in isolation. As founding director of Oak Ridge’s Quantum Computing User Program, he also helped establish a route for scientific users to access hardware. His current Quantum Science Center leadership continues this focus on integration with high-performance computing and usable research infrastructure.
Founder of Quantinuum; Chair (UK), Topos Institute
Quantinuum / Topos Institute · United Kingdom
Khan helped establish Quantinuum’s integrated hardware-and-software business and supports mathematical research institutions, linking quantum entrepreneurship with the organizational structures that sustain long-term technical development.
Khan’s contribution is entrepreneurial and institutional. Quantinuum identifies him as its founder and former CEO; the business combined Honeywell Quantum Solutions with Cambridge Quantum’s software and applications activities. He later took responsibility for product development as the company’s first chief product officer. His Topos chairmanship adds an institutional connection to mathematics and computation. These are documented leadership roles, and the profile does not assign him personal authorship of the algorithms or hardware produced by the organizations.
Schiciano Family Distinguished Professor, Duke University; cofounder of IonQ
Duke University · United States
Kim develops engineering approaches for scalable trapped-ion computers and networks, connecting ion-trap design and photonics with academic research and the commercialization of quantum hardware through IonQ.
Kim’s contributions connect the physics of individual ions with the engineering required for larger processors. His work with Christopher Monroe analyzed architectures involving microfabricated traps and photonic connections, making scale a concrete systems question. He then cofounded IonQ to translate university research into a computing business. Duke’s current faculty profile anchors his professional identification. The profile treats IonQ’s creation as an entrepreneurial contribution and reserves technical claims for the research that directly supports them.
Executive Director, Quantum Economic Development Consortium
QED-C / SRI · United States
Connects quantum businesses, research organizations and public agencies through QED-C, bringing experience in technology policy and research partnerships to the practical development of the quantum industry.
Merzbacher represents the institutional work required to turn scientific capability into a functioning industry. SRI identifies her responsibility for building QED-C and managing the consortium. That role connects organizations whose needs span technology development, suppliers and deployment. Her earlier science-policy work provides relevant context: she oversaw coordination of the National Nanotechnology Initiative at the White House. Her inclusion recognizes ecosystem leadership, with no attribution of individual hardware inventions or standardized technical results.
Combines quantum-algorithm research with the development of practical quantum software, including methods for accelerating statistical estimation and extracting value from limited quantum hardware.
Montanaro links a theoretical question, how much faster a quantum algorithm can be, with the engineering question of what present machines can contribute. His Monte Carlo result establishes a general route to improved estimation under explicit assumptions. Later work explores quantum-generated samples as an input to classical simulation. Phasecraft provides an organizational setting for translating that research into software. The evidence supports a combination of algorithm design and company building, without treating projected advantage as an achieved commercial outcome.
Connects silicon-spin quantum research with semiconductor manufacturing, combining contributions to atomic-scale quantum control with the development of Quantum Motion’s silicon computing architecture.
Morton spans fundamental control of spins in silicon and the practical demands of producing a quantum computer. His coauthored nuclear-spin experiment demonstrates the first side of that connection, while founding Quantum Motion addresses architecture and industrial fabrication. The company’s current team page identifies him as founder and CTO. Phasecraft also identifies him as a director and co-founder, so those affiliations are complementary rather than mutually exclusive. This profile emphasizes documented research and founding contributions without assigning company-wide inventions to him alone.
Works across quantum algorithms and quantum-safe security, combining foundational results in information processing with programs that help organizations prepare cryptographic systems for future quantum capabilities.
Mosca’s work connects the capabilities of quantum computers with the security transition those capabilities motivate. His research on private quantum channels specifies how classical keys can protect quantum information. At Waterloo, he also helped create programs and industry connections for quantum-safe cryptography, including CryptoWorks21 and evolutionQ. That combination matters because technical security results and real-world migration solve different parts of the same problem. Inclusion recognizes both research and institution building, without predicting when encryption-breaking quantum computers will become available.
Connects early optical quantum-gate experiments with the effort to manufacture large photonic quantum computers, now guiding PsiQuantum’s strategy and partnerships as executive chairman.
O’Brien’s work spans the laboratory demonstration of an optical logic gate and the organization of a company around photonic quantum computing. The controlled-NOT experiment is a specific early result: it produced entangled photon states using an optical circuit, with limitations inherent to its probabilistic operation. PsiQuantum extends the photonic approach toward semiconductor manufacturing and large systems. His February 2026 move to executive chairman identifies a strategic role; it should not be confused with an ongoing chief executive title.
Builds quantum hardware around cat qubits, connecting experimental suppression of selected errors in an oscillator with Alice & Bob’s effort to develop fault-tolerant superconducting computers.
Peronnin’s contribution begins with a concrete physical result: a coauthored experiment showed that an oscillator encoding could suppress bit flips exponentially as its encoded states were separated. That bias changes how error correction can be designed, although the remaining errors still require protection. Co-founding Alice & Bob with Raphaël Lescanne brought this approach into a company focused on quantum computing. His inclusion recognizes the connection between experimental research and sustained system development, without treating a proposed scalable architecture as already complete.
Connects early research on individually trapped atoms with the development of Pasqal, now leading strategic alliances as the company builds its neutral-atom quantum-computing business.
Reymond links the laboratory origins of neutral-atom control with the organization of a company around that platform. Pasqal’s leadership biography identifies his doctoral work with Philippe Grangier and a 2001 single-atom trapping publication. It also documents his role as a founder and the executive who helped develop the company internationally. His current responsibility is strategic alliances, a different remit from the founding chief executive role. The profile recognizes those documented contributions without crediting every Pasqal technical result to him personally.
