Meet the Team

Professor Andrew Briggs is the inaugural holder of the Chair of Nanomaterials at the University of Oxford. His research interests focus on materials and techniques for quantum technologies and their incorporation into practical devices. Current hot topics include vibrational states of nanotubes and charge transport through single molecules in graphene nanogaps, and machine learning for characterising and tuning quantum devices. He has more than 600 publications, with over 27,000 citations.

Vishal is a serial deep-tech entrepreneur. Previously he was the CEO and co-founder of Secondmind an AI company. Vishal’s work experience spans fundamental research, manufacturing, operations, R&D, product management, corporate strategy and business development. Vishal was previously Head of Automotive at Nokia, Founder of Chleon Automotive and Chief Business Officer of VocalIQ, which was acquired by Apple in 2015. Vishal acts as an advisor to Silo AI, PolyAI, Alpha Diagnostics and BioInception Labs. He has immigrated 11 times, lived in 15 cities from the Equator to the Arctic across six countries.

Natalia is a Royal Society University Research Fellow at University of Oxford. She has recently been awarded an ERC Starting grant. Her group focuses on experiments to advance the understanding of thermodynamics in nanoscale devices and on the development of artificial intelligence for quantum technologies. For her PhD, she focused on silicon technologies for quantum computing at CEA Grenoble, France. She did a masters in the theory of quantum chaos at University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Dominic is a final year DPhil student working in the Ares group to automate the control of quantum experiments using machine learning methods. After growing up in Birmingham he moved to Brighton to study a combined masters in Physics at the University of Sussex; eventually working with Prof Winfried Hensinger to automate the stabilisation of ion traps. In 2017 he graduated and moved to study his DPhil at the Materials department in the University of Oxford where he helped initiate the Ares groups Machine learning for quantum devices project. Since joining, the project has grown to employ 12 other full-time  researchers, and has published multiple high impact papers in Nature family journals.

Juha has over 25 years of experience working for the world’s largest technology companies (Nokia, Apple) as well as cutting edge technology start-ups (Vocaliq, Secondmind.ai). He holds an MSc degree from Tampere University of Technology, Finland, with majors in software engineering and mathematics. Throughout his career he has worked on hi-tech product development in various roles ranging from engineering and product management to programme management and executive leadership.

Juho has over 7 years of experience as a software / machine learning engineer.  He has worked on many different projects such as fuel price optimisation, maintaining balance in the electricity grid, IoT platform development, and electric vehicle charging optimisation. Juho holds a MSc in Computer Science with a focus on machine learning from the University of Helsinki.

Kati has over 20 years of work experience in working in various roles in finance in different industries and in multinational environments, from start-up companies to listed companies. She has worked in Finland and UK and has experience in managing finances of companies at group level across Europe. She holds a MSc degree in Economics from Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration.

Freddie is an engineering and B2B sales professional with experience in R&D, manufacturing and business development. He holds an MEng from the University of Oxford in Materials Science and has recently completed his MBA at the Saïd Business School, Oxford. Before the MBA, Freddie was an Application Engineer at Element Six (part of the De Beers group), responsible for providing technical support to the sales team, and interpreting customer needs to ensure they get maximum value from E6 solutions.

Anssi has more than 10 years of experience applying machine learning in business problems across various industries. His previous employers vary from software houses (SAS Institute, Basware) to banking (Aktia) and ML consulting (Combient Mix). Prior to his career in the private sector Anssi worked as a researcher in academia. Anssi holds a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Helsinki and has worked as a postdoc in the field of ultracold quantum gases at the Queen’s University (Kingston, ON, Canada) and Nordita (Copenhagen/Stockholm).

Binh has been working as a software engineer for more than six years specialising in frontend development. His experiences expand to multiple industries such as e-commerce, real estate, and cyber security. Binh holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Information Technology from Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. 

David has over 15 years experience in systems and software engineering working across both large organisations and startups. After spending the early part of his career focused on modelling and simulation within the defence industry he has spent the last 5 years applying machine learning research to real world problems. He holds a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Manchester.

Jacob is a Machine Learning Engineer at QuantrolOx, with over 5 years of experience at start-up companies and technology consultancies. He has worked for a range of clients, spanning many industries and applications. He holds a MPhys in Physics from the University of Oxford, specialising in quantum information processing in his final year.

Tomi has a decade of experience with physics in academia and another decade of experience with software development in industry. In his physics research he focused on theoretical studies of quantum nanostructures, and he holds a PhD from Aalto University. In software engineering he has worked on machine learning and algorithm development across a wide range of industries.

Khanh has been working as a software engineer for over 5 years, with the majority of that time focussed on building machine learning systems for different business sectors. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering from Metropolia University of Applied Science and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Applied Data Science.

Qiaochu is an applied researcher at QuantrolOx, with both theoretical and experimental experience in quantum information processing. She specialised in theoretical research and simulation of fault-tolerant topological quantum computing during her MSc physics programme at Imperial College London. Afterwards, she worked in experimental quantum systems at IOPCAS, where she fabricated topological quantum devices in cleanrooms and tested them with dilution refrigerators.

Ziyuan has been a machine learning specialist since 2018, previously in medical imaging, where he worked with neural networks to bring intelligence to CT/CBCT equipment. Before that, he was a PhD student in machine learning at Aalto University and studied dimensionality reduction and information retrieval. He holds an MSc degree in applied mathematics from Sun Yat-sen University and has enhanced his physics background by completing a master’s-level minor in engineering physics from Aalto University. 

Alex received double bachelor degrees in physics and philosophy and then a PhD in applied physics from the Colorado School of Mines. There, his research focused on tackling problems relevant to quantum computing using machine learning (ML) such as ML and GPU accelerated quantum simulation, unsupervised-ML assisted interpretation of states, and ML based sample-efficient benchmarking and optimal control.

Lauri has been working as a software engineer since 2008 and as a data scientist since 2016. He has experience in both the private and public sector. He holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Aalto University with a focus on algorithm design and machine learning.

David completed an integrated master’s degree in applied mathematics and physics at Queen’s University Belfast, before moving to study for a DPhil in the Natalia Ares group at the University of Oxford. During his DPhil, he undertook both experimental and theoretical research in the field of electrostatically defined quantum dots, and employed machine learning methods to develop algorithms for the inference of quantum device characteristics.

Sue has over 20 years experience as an Executive Assistant/Personal Assistant in London & Cambridge working across both start-ups and large organisations – 15 of these years being in the Telecoms industry. Her professional focus is on CEO and Leadership support.

Christian is a Physicist with a research background ranging from quantum transport in semiconducting nanostructures to novel types of superconducting qubits. During his PhD in Basel, with Prof. C. Schönenberger, he focused on quantum transport phenomena in semiconducting – superconducting hybrid devices. In the course of his postdoctoral fellowship in the group of Prof. I. Siddiqi at the University of California, Berkeley (United States) he was responsible for the development of novel superconducting circuit elements, such as suspended Josephson Junction arrays. Afterwards, as a Project Scientist, he led a team of students with efforts on improving current state of the art quantum processors as well as novel superconducting qubits.