The EPIC Industrial Quantum Photonics Technology Meeting brings together the European quantum industry ecosystem to commercialize upcoming products from the current R&D initiatives. This year the event is hosted at the new headquarters building of one of the key players in the quantum industry – TOPTICA. The tour around the hosting facilities will be provided. The event gathers experts and leaders from industrial companies worldwide to discuss the second quantum revolution, its applications, and challenges. We will discuss the four primary application areas in which a paradigm shift is expected: quantum communication, quantum synchronization, quantum computing, and quantum sensing. The aim of this event is to engage the audience to explore synergies in this new industry and create business opportunities for all the participants of this networking-oriented event.
Participants biographies, photos and companies descriptions are available HERE.
Read the summary of the meeting
Stephan Ritter (Director Quantum Technology Solutions) obtained his PhD degree in physics from ETH Zurich, introducing the capability to detect single atoms to the study of Bose-Einstein condensates and working on phase transitions and cavity optomechanics. He then joined the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, to develop single atoms in high-finesse optical resonators into universal nodes of an elementary quantum network. In 2017, Stephan joined TOPTICA Photonics, where he is currently leading the Quantum Technology Solutions team. Stephan is a member of the Executive Team of the European Quantum Internet Alliance (QIA) and of the Advisory Board of the German joint quantum-repeater-link project QR.X.
Peter Rosenbusch (Head of Systems Engineering) has more than twenty years of experience in quantum physics and renewable energies. Following his PhD in quantum physics, he joined the team of Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, 1997 Nobel Laureat, and then became a permanent researcher at the Observatoire de Paris where he run one of the best atomic clocks. In 2016 he switched to an industrial global player to push the frontiers of wind energy turbines. Further industry experiences on LIDAR and quantum computers led him to the R&D of field-deployable quantum gravimeters at Exail. Today he heads the world's first team to produce cold atom-based quantum sensors at an industrial scale.
Xenia Bogomolec (CEO) is the founder of Quant-X Security & Coding, a small enterprise which was founded in 2019 in Hannover, Germany. She is a mathematician and information security specialist with hands on experience in algorithm and system development. In the past years, she has managed information security projects in highly regulated heterogeneous infrastructures and cloud environments. Her passion for innovative technologies gave her the push to initiate or participate in software development in innovative areas such as quantum technology integration.
Alexander Stark (Co-Founder & CIO) is a co-founder and the CIO of Qnami, a company that develops complete turn-key Quantum Sensing solutions. His studies commenced at the university of Ulm, Germany, where he acquired in the group of Fedor Jelezko a broad understanding of the NV center in diamond. He received his PhD from the Technical University of Denmark where he developed measurement protocols for quantum sensing applications. Alexander has extensive know-how at the interface between hardware, software and quantum technologies and is the head of R&D in Qnami.
Andreas Voelker (Head of Business Development, Photonics) holds a PhD in nano photonics from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He has a research background in bio-medical imaging and diagnostics, as well as nano particle characterization. He has been Head of BD, Photonics for CSEM since 2021. Prior to this he has worked for more than 10 years as CEO of LS Instruments AG and has also gained experience at Roche Diagnostics and Ypsomed in the past. Andreas is passionate about bringing Photonic technologies to real life applications.
Valérian Giesz (Co-Founder & CEO) graduated from Institut d’Optique Graduate School in 2012 and received a PhD in Quantum Optics in 2015. During his PhD, Valérian participated to the last technical developments of the single photon sources that are the flagship of Quandela. Prior to the creation of Quandela, he followed entrepreneurship classes at HEC Paris in 2017.
Juergen Stuhler (Vice President Quantum Technologies) received his PhD in physics from the University of Constance/Germany for laser cooling & trapping of chromium atoms. During a two years post-doc stage at European Laboratory of Non-linear Spectroscopy (LENS) in Florence/Italy, he built an atom interferometric gradiometer to precisely measure the Newtonian gravitational constant. For three years, he was atom optics group leader at the University of Stuttgart/Germany. He worked on electro-magnetically induced transparency in optically trapped atoms, Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) and Rydberg excitation of rubidium atoms, BEC and dipole-dipole interaction in chromium atoms. In 2006, he joined TOPTICA Photonics as a Sales Manager for scientific products. He took over positions as Product Manager, Project Leader & Coordinator, Scientific Sales Director, and currently is Vice President and Head of the Business Unit Quantum Technologies at TOPTICA. In addition to that, he is General Manager of the TOPTICA subsidiaries in China and in France (ex Azurlight Systems).
Wilhelm Kaenders (Founder & CTO) received a Physics Diploma from U Bonn and Imperial College, London in 1989. He finished his PhD in Physics at the U Hannover in the field of laser-cooled atoms under the guidance of Prof. Meschede by devising and building magnetic atom optics. Wilhelm is a member of OSA (Fellow), SPIE (Fellow), and the German Physical Society (DPG). Since 2009 he is Chairman of the Fachbeirat “LASER World of Photonics”. His scientific work was recognized with the Berthold-Leibinger Innovation Award in 2016 and the OSA Paul-Forman-Award in 2017.
Robert Rölver (Group Leader) received PhD in electrical engineering in 2007 from RWTH Aachen University. He joined Bosch Corporate Research in Stuttgart in 2009. In 2011 he has been assigned as a technology scout at Bosch in the quantum- and nano- technology where he focused on graphene and diamond-based quantum sensors. In 2018 - assignment as a senior export on quantum sensors. In 2021 he joined Q.ANT and became head of sensing being responsible for the product line quantum magnetometers.
Martin Schell (Executive Director) studied physics at the RWTH Aachen University and took his Ph.D. in 1993 at the Technical University of Berlin. Following a one-year research post at the University of Tokyo, Martin Schell worked from 1995 to 2000 as a management consultant for high tech and energy at the Boston Consulting Group. Before he joined Fraunhofer HHI as head of the Photonic Components department in 2005, he was head of production at Infineon Fiber Optic Technologies. Since 2012, he is professor for optical and optoelectronic Integration at Technical University Berlin. Since 2014, Martin Schell leads Fraunhofer HHI together with Thomas Wiegand. From 2015 to 2021, Martin Schell was member of the EPIC Board of Directors, and from 2019 to 2021 member of the Jenoptik Science Advisory Board. He is head of the board of OpTecBB, a network of 100 photonic companies and institutions in Berlin and Brandenburg.
Martijn Heck (Professor) has a PhD in electrical engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, on the topic of photonic integration, where he is currently a full professor (since 2020) and the Scientific Director of the Eindhoven Hendrik Casimir Institute (since 2021). Previously, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Free University of Amsterdam (2008-2009) and the University of California Santa Barbara, US (2009–2013), and an Associate Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark (2013–2020). His research is focused on photonic integration, from technology development, including heterogeneous integration techniques, to applications in sensors, microwave and terahertz photonics, quantum technology and chip-to-chip and on-chip interconnects.
Rolando Ferrini (Chief Regional Officer & Head of FEMTOprint Neuchâtel) joined FEMTOprint in 2022 as Chief Regional Officer and Head of FEMTOprint Neuchâtel, the subsidiary devoted to photonic-related microdevices in glass. In 1999, he obtained his PhD degree in Physics at the Università degli Studi di Pavia, Italy, with a thesis on the optical properties of III-V semiconductor materials for electronics and optoelectronics. From 2000 to 2004, he worked as Research Associate at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland, where he studied the optical properties of semiconductor-based photonic crystal devices. From 2004 to 2011, as Senior Research Associate at EPFL, he was in charge of the activities on organic devices for optics, photonics and lighting. From 2011 to 2022, he worked at CSEM as Group Leader MicroNano Optics and in 2021 as Head of the Focus Area Photonics. From 2020 to 2021, he founded the PHABULOuS pilot line for the manufacturing of freeform micro-optical components, acting both as project coordinator of the related H2020 project and as Managing Director.
Devang Naik (Quantum Tech Expert) has a rich and diverse background spanning entangled photon quantum cryptography, ultra-cold atoms, quantum degenerate matter, cavity QED and quantum sensing. He started his research career in the field of quantum cryptography using entangled photon pairs, resulting in the first demonstration of the BB92 protocol (Los Alamos National Lab). Later he completed his PhD in the field of degenerate quantum matter, working on quantum vortices using bose-einstein condensates (at the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA) and strongly interacting many-body systems using degenerate fermionic mixtures (University of Innsbruck). He developed novel cooling techniques which have allowed the creation of portable BEC interferometers in Zero-G aerial experiments (University of Bordeaux, France and the University of Florence, Italy) and has worked intensively with BECs in cavity QED experiments (University of Bordeaux). The capabilities of quantum resources for enhanced sensing of not only our world but ourselves has led him to become the head of quantum technologies at GLOPhotonics developing the next generation of portable, all-fibered quantum sensors for bio-medical applications.
Christian Haffner (Principal Member of Technical Staff) is a Principal Member of Technical Staff and was awarded the first tenure track position at IMEC. He is leading a research group that explores the limits of integrated electro-optical devices in the classical and quantum domain. This research is supported by an ERC starting grant (2022). In 2019, he was accepted to the 5-year Branco-Weiss Fellowship program. And performed his Postdoc research on nano-scale opto-mechanical switches at NIST, Gaithersburg and ETH, Zurich. He received his Ph.D. degree from ETH Zurich in 2018, for which he was awarded the ETH Medal and Hans-Eggenberger Prize. His PhD research was on exploring plasmonics as an active electro-optic device technology in the group of Juerg Leuthold. He obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany)in 2012 and in 2013, respectively. He was ranked first in his masterbatch. During his study, he was awarded a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation. His research has been published in high-impact journals including Nature, Nature Photonics, Science and Nano Letters. News outlets such the OSA’s Optics and Photonics News and the IEEE Spectrum have featured his publications.
Eric Mounier (Chief Analyst) is Fellow Analyst at Yole Group (Yole), with more than 25+ years’ experience within the semiconductor industry. He provides daily in-depth insights into current and future semiconductor trends, markets and innovative technologies (such as Quantum computing, Si photonics, new sensing technologies, new type of sensors ...). Based on relevant methodological expertise and a strong technological background, he works closely with all the teams at Yole to point out disruptive technologies and analyze and present business opportunities through technology & market reports and custom consulting projects. With numerous internal workshops on technologies, methodologies, best practices and more, Yole’s Fellow Analyst ensures the training of Yole’s Technology & Market Analysts. In this position, he has spoken in numerous international conferences, presenting his vision of the semiconductor industry and latest technical innovations. He has also authored or co-authored more than 100 papers as well as more than 120 Yole’s technology & market reports. Previously, Eric held R&D and Marketing positions at CEA Leti (France). Eric has a PhD. in Semiconductor Engineering and a degree in Optoelectronics from the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble (France).
Thomas Laurent (Director Business Development) is a proven expert in photonics, quantum technologies and space with more than 20 years of professional experience. He was co-founder and CTO/Managing Director of eagleyard Photonics GmbH (now part of Toptica Photonics AG). With his experience from contributions to traditional space missions such as GAIA, CATS, CAL and EXO Mars, he moved into the New Space area, which deals with satellite communications services. At Rivada Space Networks, he leads business development with a focus on government services and critical infrastructure. He holds a PhD in physical chemistry (Humboldt University of Berlin).
Johanna Sepúlveda (Expert on Quantum-Secure Technologies) received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering – Microelectronics by the University of São Paulo, Brazil. She was a Senior Researcher at the University of South Brittany (France), INRIA-Photonics (France) and at the Technical University of Munich (Germany). Currently she holds a position as the Airbus Expert on Quantum-Secure Technologies. Also, she is a member of the Strategic Advisory Board of Quantum Technologies for the European Commission. She has more than 15 years of experience in R&T and R&D in the area of security, networked systems, HPC and quantum technologies.
