Quantum Leap in European Collaboration

Laura Citron is CEO of London & Partners, the international promotional agency for London. She leads the organisation to grow London’s global reputation and to attract business, tourists, students, events and talent to London. Laura has spent her career at the intersection of business, policy and communications. Prior to London & Partners, she was Managing Director of the Government & Public Sector Practice at WPP.

Dr. Wolfgang Hübschle has many years of experience in location marketing and economic promotion services. Since 2013 he has been the executive director of Invest in Bavaria, the Business Promotion Agency of the Free State of Bavaria. Prior to that he was the representative of the State of Bavaria in New York and in charge of handling the acquisition of American companies.

Internationally renowned physicist Ignacio Cirac is the Head of Theory Division at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching near Munich. With his colleague Peter Zoller, he made the first proposals for building quantum computers, quantum simulators, and quantum repeaters using atoms, ions, photons and other physical systems.

Sebastian Luber is Director Technology & Innovation at Infineon Technologies. He also acts as technology scout and speaker on second-generation quantum technologies. After graduating from the TU Munich in experimental physics, he worked as research assistant at the Walter Schottky Institute in Munich and at Fujitsu Laboratories in Japan.

Torsten Siebert is the central coordinator for the Quantum Technologies Program of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. The program encompasses the interdisciplinary research activities of over 16 Fraunhofer-Institutes and spans the fields of quantum imaging, sensors, communication and computing technologies.

Professor Ian Walmsley FRS is Provost of Imperial College London, where he is also Chair in Experimental Physics. One of the world’s foremost authorities on quantum optics, Professor Walmsley is Director of the UK’s Networked Quantum Information Technologies Hub (NQIT). He has written about the need for global collaboration in the race to develop a commercially viable quantum computer.