Speakers line up for Quantum Australia 2024

AUSTRALIA’S FOREMOST quantum industry event – bringing global quantum players together with industry, academia, and government – is on again from 20-22 February 2024. Sold out two years in a row, the 2024 event is expected to attract over 500 delegates to Sydney from around the world, with over half from industry and government.

The 2024 program includes top government officials, such as Australia’s Chief Scientist Dr Cathy Foley; Prof Sir Peter Knight, Chair of the Strategic Advisory Board of the UK National Quantum Technology Program who is leading a sizeable British delegation to Sydney; and Dr Dimitri Kusnezov, Under Secretary for Science and Technology at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security; and Roger McKinlay, head of the Quantum Technologies Challenge at peak research funder UK Research and Innovation.

Quantum entrepreneurs

Leading quantum entrepreneurs from overseas will be speaking, including Dr Stephanie Simmons, Founder and Chief Quantum Officer of Canadian quantum computing start-up Photonic Inc; Dr David Gunnarsson, Chief Technology Officer of Finland’s Bluefors, a start-up that now dominates the global market for cryostats used in quantum computers; Dr Si-Hui Tan, who heads research at Singapore’s Horizon Quantum Computing; and Dr Chris Wood, Chief Technology Officer, of U.S. quantum technology start-up Infleqtion.  

There will be a strong line-up of key Australian quantum entrepreneurs, such as Prof Michelle Simmons, CEO of Sydney-based Silicon Quantum Computing (and 2023 winner of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science); Prof Andre Luiten, Managing Director of Adelaide-based quantum sensing and precision timing start-up QuantX; Prof Michael Biercuk, CEO of Sydney quantum software start-up Q-CTRL; Prof Tom Stace, CEO and co-founder of Analog Quantum Circuits, the Brisbane-based superconducting quantum technology start-up; and Dr Kerrie Jackson, Head of Business Development at Canberra-based quantum sensing start-up Nomad Atomics.

Industry heavyweights

Other industry heavyweights include Bill Bartee, co-founder and managing partner of Main Sequence, the deep tech investment fund founded by Australia's science agency CSIRO with more than $1 billion invested; Dr Christophe Jurczak, managing partner at Quantonation, the French-American early stage venture capital firm focusing on quantum technologies; and Michael Brett, Seattle-based Worldwide Go-To-Market Strategy Lead for Quantum Technologies at Amazon Web Services.

It wouldn’t be a quantum conference without an insight into the latest science and technology. Hear from noted research leaders like Prof Gavin Brennen, Director of the Macquarie Centre for Quantum Engineering at Macquarie University in Sydney; Prof Jingbo Wang, Director of the Quantum Information, Simulation and Algorithms research hub at the University of Western Australia in Perth; Prof Andrea Morello, Scientia Professor of Quantum Engineering at UNSW Sydney; Prof Andrew Doherty, Chief Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems at the University of Sydney; and Prof Brant Gibson,  Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics at Melbourne's RMIT University.

There’s also Andrew Seedhouse, Chief of Cyber Intelligence & National Security Divisions at Australia's Defence Science and Technology Group; Dr Jane Fitzpatrick, CEO of the Australian National Fabrication Facility; Prof Peter Turner, CEO of Sydney Quantum Academy and member of the Macquarie University Research Centre for Quantum Engineering; Prof Elanor Huntington, Executive Director of Digital and National Facilities and Collections, CSIRO; Dr Nadia Court, Director of the Semiconductor Sector Service Bureau; Prof Kavan Modi of the Monash Quantum Information Science at Monash University; A/Prof Mary Jacqueline Romero from the University of Queensland; Dr Sushmita Ruj, Engineering Lead at the UNSW Institute for Cybersecurity; and Mark Stickells, CEO of the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre.

See the full list of speakers for Quantum Australia 2024 here. Or you can find out more about the conference, and register to attend, by clicking here.

Career opportunities

There will also be a Careers Fair on the morning of the first day, free to students and educators, where Australia’s emerging talent will hear from a careers-focused panel discussion.

Poster authors qualify for a new ‘Pitch Your Research’ session held during the conference, with the top five posters chosen by the judges delivering a five-minute ‘elevator pitch’ to conference delegates on the main stage. There will also be a $500 People’s Choice Award to the poster garnering the most votes from conference delegates, and $500 to the winner of the ‘Pitch Your Research’ session.

Exhibitors looking for new talent or showcasing their training and career development opportunities will include Amazon Web Services, Australian Defence Force, NEC, CSIRO, Quintessence Labs, Diraq, ARC Centre of Excellence in Quantum Biotechnology, KPMG, Bluefors, Australian National Fabrication Facility and Heavy Ion Accelerators.

For more information on the Quantum Careers Fair, and to register your place, click here.

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