DECODE QUANTUM

Christian Weedbrook is the founder and CEO of Xanadu Quantum Technologies. He is an Australian-born physicist and entrepreneur based in Toronto, Canada.  He has a PhD in Physics from the University of Queensland, specializing in Quantum Information Theory.  He was a postdoc at the MIT and the University of Toronto. Initially, he attended film school with aspirations of becoming a director before returning to mathematics and science. He also explored several small-scale entrepreneurial projects, including selling heat packs and trading at local flea markets. In 2014, he launched CipherQ, which specialized in quantum security and cryptography. He then created Xanadu in 2016.

Sabrina Maniscalco is the CEO and cofounder of Algorithmiq, a startup developing quantum algorithms for applications in life sciences based in Helsinki. She is also a Professor of Quantum Information, Computing, and Logic at the University of Helsinki. ​Beforehand, she held academic positions in Sofia, Durban, Turku, and Edinburgh, before returning to Finland in 2014 to lead the Theoretical Physics Laboratory in Turku. She moved to the University of Helsinki in 2020, coinciding with the founding of Algorithmiq. ​She’s done research on noise in quantum devices, complex quantum systems, and quantum simulations.

Welcome to the 83rd episode of Decode Quantum, the quantum podcast where we like to get in depth in quantum science and technology, this time with Wilhelm Kaenders, the president and CTO of Toptica.
 
Wilhelm Kaenders is the co-founder of Toptica, because he had one other co-founder. He is now its president and CTO. The company is a worldwide leader in lasers used in mostly the academic world, but also in some parts of the industry. Wilhelm did his PhD in quantum physics at the Institute of Quantum Optics in Hanover, in the group of Dieter Meschede. He was behind the technology of the group of Theodor Hänsch at the Max Planck Institute, who became the laureate of the Nobel Prize in physics exactly 20 years ago, 2005. He pioneered the business of tunable diode laser technology and contributed to the development of the technology of the optical frequency comb. He created Toptica in 1998, which is probably one of the oldest companies in the enabling tech for quantum technology.
 
https://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/2025/decode-quantum-with-wilhelm-kaenders-from-toptica

Welcome to the 82th episode of Decode Quantum, this time, with Chris Ballance, the cofounder and CEO of Oxford Ionics.
 
Chris Ballance is the cofounder and CEO of Oxford Ionics since its inception in 2019. His cofounder is Tom Harty who is the company’s CTO. Before that, he was a senior researcher at Oxford University, where he did his PhD between 2010 and 2015.
 
Transcript : https://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/2025/decode-quantum-with-chris-ballance-from-oxford-ionics

Welcome to this 81st episode of Decode Quantum, or interviews around the world about quantum. Fanny Bouton andOlivier Ezratty were with Mathieu Munsch from QNAMI, the CEO.
 
Mathieu Munsch is the CEO and co-founder of QNAMI, a Swiss startup located in Basel, specializing in NV-center quantum sensors. Born in France, he was first trained in optics semiconductors and spintronics before turning to research in quantum physics. After obtaining his PhD at the Institut Néel in Grenoble, he continued his postdoctoral work on the manipulation and detection of quantum dot single spins, particularly quantum dot single spins. At the University of Basel, he launched Qnami in 2017 to commercialize sensors that perform very high-resolution magnetic imaging.
Full transcript: https://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/2025/decode-quantum-with-mathieu-munsch-from-qnami/