European Quantum Week

Markus Wilkens is heading the European Quantum Flagship Coordination Office since April 2019. He has more than 15 years of experience in setting up and implementing community-driven strategy processes and public-private funding initiatives in deep technology sectors. As Head of Operations of the European Technology Platform Photonic21, he was responsible for establishing a public investment partnership of 700 million euros between European industry, research institutions and the European Commission for the Horizon 2020 research framework programme. He has been an invited expert on various EU Commission advisory boards, including the Key Enabling Technology (KET) and Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) initiatives. He previously worked as a technology consultant for Bayerische Landesbank, Munich, in investment banking and private equity. Markus is a graduate biologist and studied at the Free University of Berlin and Stanford University, USA.

Serge Haroche was born to a Jewish family in Casablanca, Morocco. His mother, whose family had Russian roots, was a teacher, and his father a lawyer. Aged 12, Serge moved to France. Since moving to Paris he has worked at École Normale Superieure, CNRS (the National Center for Scientific Research), Ecole Polytechnique, and Collège de France, where he is currently employed. He has also spent periods of time working at Stanford, Harvard, and Yale universities in the US. Serge Haroche is married with two children.

When it comes to the smallest components of our universe, our usual understanding of how the world works ceases to apply. We have entered the realm of quantum physics. For a long time, many quantum phenomena could only be examined theoretically. Starting in the 1980s, Serge Haroche has designed ingenious experiments to study quantum phenomena when matter and light interact. He has been able to capture photons using another kind of trap - two mirrors which they can bounce between. This device allowed Serge Haroche to study the photons by passing atoms through the trap.Reference: Nobel Prize Biography of Serge Haroche

Khalil Rouhana is the Deputy Director-General in DG CONNECT (Communications Networks, Content & Technology) since 1/12/2016. His responsibilities include the policies for digital economy and society and notably for research, innovation and industrial strategies, digital solution for societal challenges and governments as well as cybersecurity. Before that he was Director for “Digital Industry” in DG CONNECT supporting the competitiveness of core digital sectors in Europe and the digitisation of all industrial sectors of the economy. In his previous experiences in the Commission, he was the Director for “Digital content & Cognitive systems”, the Head of Unit in charge of ICT research and Innovation strategy, and started as a project officer in the ESPRIT programme in the areas of High Performance Computing and Future and Emerging technologies.Before joining the Commission in 1992, he was for 5 years the director of an institute and school of engineering (Grande Ecole) in France. He started his career as research and development engineer for the aeronautics industry, worked for the French University in Beirut and created also his own engineering company. He has a master degree in electrical and electronic engineering from “Ecole Supérieure d’Electricité” (Supelec, France).

Herbert Zeisel is currently Deputy Director General “Research for Digital Transformation and Innovation” at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). His responsibilities include the Research and Innovation strategies in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and Software, Microelectronics, Cybersecurity and Communication, Quantum technologies, Human Machine Interfaces (Robotics) as well as innovations in Industrie 4.0, Autonomous Driving, and High Performance Computing.He holds a diploma as “Diplom-Ingenieur (Uni)” and a PhD from the Friedrich-Alexander- University in Erlangen-Nuremberg in the field of Chemical Engineering. In 1988, he joined the “Federal Ministry for Research and Technology” (BMFT, later BMBF) acting as Project Officer and from 1994 as Head of Unit in different ICT-Fields (Microsystems and Sensors, Microelectronics, Internet and Services, Software, IT Operations, Information Management). From 2002 to 2010 he was Director for “Information and Communication Technologies” (ICT) at the German Aerospace Agency (DLR-PT). He represented Germany as head of delegation in several European and international committees. 2012 to 2014 Zeisel headed the division for Nanotechnology, New Materials and Batteries at the BMBF before he became Director for Key Technologies

Jürgen Mlynek is Chair of Strategic Advisory Board of the Quantum Flagship, continuing the work he started at the helm of the High-Level Steering Committee, the initiative’s founding expert group in 2016. He obtained his PhD in physics in 1979 and habilitated in 1984, after which he became a Heisenberg fellow of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and served as assistant professor at ETH Zurich. He became a full professor for experimental physics at University of Konstanz in 1990 and at Humboldt University of Berlin in 2000. From 1996 to 2001, he served as vice president of the German Research Foundation and between 2000 and 2005, president of the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 2005, Mlynek switched to the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, Germany’s largest science organization, and became president for two terms until 2015.Throughout his scientific career, Mlynek has worked in the field of experimental quantum optics, atomic physics and surface physics and has published more than 200 papers. He has received numerous awards for his work both as a researcher and a science manager, among them the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Jaya Baloo has been working internationally in Information Security for nearly 20 years. In the last few years, she has been named CISO of the year, top 100 CISOs globally, and top 100 Global Security Influencers. Her focus has been on secure network architecture where her work has ranged in areas from Lawful Interception, VoIP & Mobile Security, to designing national MPLS infrastructures, ISP architecture, as well as Quantum Communications networks. She has worked for numerous telecom providers, Verizon and France Telecom among others, and currently works for KPN Telecom in the Netherlands where she is the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). A faculty member of Singularity university and a member of various infosec boards, she is always inspired about how much more there is to learn. As of October 1st, 2019, she will become the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for Avast, Czechia

Tommaso Calarco has pioneered the application of quantum optimal control methods to quantum computation and to many-body quantum systems. Currently the Director of the Institute for Quantum Control of the Peter Grünberg Institute at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Tommaso received his PhD at the University of Ferrara and started to work as a postdoc in the group of P. Zoller at the University of Innsbruck. He was appointed as a Senior researcher at the BEC Centre in Trento in 2004 and as a Professor for Physics at the University of Ulm in 2007, where he then became Director of the Institute for Complex Quantum Systems and of the Centre for Integrated Quantum Science and Technology.He has authored in 2016 the Quantum Manifesto, which initiated the European Commission’s Quantum Flagship initiative, and is currently the Chairman of one of the Flagship’s Governing Bodies: The Quantum Community Network.

Dr. Thierry Botter is Head of Airbus Blue Sky, Airbus’ gateway to basic research on technologies and capabilities of the future in aerospace. His organization is currently running research projects in quantum and secure communication, quantum computing, quantum sensing, and computational neuroscience. He previously led Airbus’ Optronics Research Team. The team, based in both Germany and the United Kingdom with 10 researchers and several students, focused on short- and long-range optical communication, fibre-based sensors, optical air data systems, active and passive optical imaging across multiple frequency bands, and intelligent displays. Prior to joining Airbus, Dr. Botter was a postdoctoral scholar in the Quantum Sciences and Technology group of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He worked on the development of transportable atom interferometers for gravity and gravity gradient sensing in space. Dr. Botter holds a Ph.D. degree in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He conducted his doctoral research on cavity optomechanics in the quantum regime with ultracold atoms, under the guidance of Prof. Dan Stamper-Kurn.

Chiara Macchiavello received her PhD in 1995 from the University of Pavia. She then spent two years at the University of Oxford with a Marie Curie postdoctoral position. In 1998 she became research assistant at the University of Pavia, where she is now Professor of the Physics of Quantum Computation.She has made relevant contributions in various aspects of theoretical quantum information science, including pioneer work in quantum error correction and quantum algorithms, quantum privacy amplification and quantum cloning. For her work she was awarded a prestigious prize from Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in 2006.

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 executive 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 last CERN European Strategy.

Thierry Debuisschert is a scientist at Thales Research & Technology where he is responsible for applied quantum physics activity. His expertise covers non-linear optics, quantum optics, quantum cryptography and NV centers in diamond. He has contributed to numerous research projects at national or European level in these fields. He was coordinator of the European integrated project DIADEMS (2013-2017) dedicated to the development of magnetometers based on NV centres in diamond. Currently, he is coordinating the ASTERIQS project and he is involved in the quantum coordination and support action QSA which is dedicated to the implementation and support of the Quantum Flagship.

For information on his educational and professional background and experience, click on the following link

For information on Prof. Dr. Rainer Müller's educational and professional background, please click on the following link