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.

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.

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. 

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.

Anton Vladyka is a member of the Business Development team, focusing on the client interactions and building custom software solutions. With 11 years of research experience, he has expertise in nanofabrication, electrical characterization, data analysis and machine learning. He received his PhD in Nanosciences from the University of Basel, where he studied electrical transport in individual molecules. Prior to joining Quantrolox, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham and the University of Turku.

Lasse is a technology commercial leader with years of international experience scaling SaaS, cloud, and infrastructure businesses across EMEA, the US, and APAC. As VP of Sales and Partnerships he leads QuantrolOx’s go-to-market and revenue operations, building the partner ecosystem and enterprise sales motion that bring the company’s software to quantum labs, research sites and computing platforms worldwide. As a builder, Lasse previously held commercial leadership roles at Microsoft, AWS, and WithSecure, where his work spanned enterprise sales, channel-led GTM, and strategic partnerships. Lasse splits his time between the Netherlands and Finland.”

Ville has over 7 years of experience working in quality, software development and infrastructure roles across different industries. He has worked both as an in-house engineer at Vaisala and as a consultant at Netlight, helping teams improve quality practices and engineering culture wherever he goes. He holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Aalto University, majoring in Control, Robotics and Autonomous Systems.

Shaun has more than 10 years of experience applying DevOps engineering practices to infrastructure and release management problems across various platforms. His previous employers vary from tech consulting giants (CGI) and school management software providers (WCBS) to identity management solutions (PingID). Shaun holds a BSc (Hons) in Computing from the University of South Wales.

Siddharth completed his PhD at QuTech, TU Delft in 2025. His research focused on circuit QED, fluxonium qubits, and tunable couplers for superconducting quantum processors. During his PhD, he worked on fabrication, measurement and design of superconducting qubits. He further holds an M.Sc. in Physics and a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from BITS Pilani.

Jonathan Dexter completed a Master’s degree in Theoretical Physics at University College London before transitioning into experimental research. He subsequently earned a PhD from the University of Oxford as a member of the research group led by Natalia Ares. His research focused on nanoscale thermodynamics and quantum transport in semiconductor quantum dot devices, with particular emphasis on the thermodynamics of timekeeping and information processing at the nanoscale. Prior to his career in physics, Jonathan trained as a musician and spent many years working in music education before embarking on his doctoral studies at Oxford.