Symposium Alain Aspect

Philippe Goldner is a CNRS research director working at the Paris Institute for Chemical Research (Chimie ParisTech, CNRS, PSL University). In 1993, he obtained his PhD and joined the CNRS to work on luminescent rare earth doped materials. He later moved to the French National Center for Telecommunication Studies and in 2002 to Chimie ParisTech graduate school where he is currently a member of the Crystal and Quantum State Dynamics Group.  The team develops doped various types of crystals for optical quantum technologies. He coordinated the FET-Open project NanOQTech which won him a Stars of Europe award in 2020 and obtained in 2021 an ERC Advanced Grant to develop new hybrid materials for quantum photonics.  He received in 2022 the CNRS Silver Medal for outstanding research work and the Philippe A. Guye Prize of the French Academy of Sciences in 2024.

As the CTO of Breakthrough Energy, Dr. Toone oversees the organization’s technological roadmap and evaluation. As part of his work, Eric also serves as a Managing Partner of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the venture capital arm of Breakthrough Energy. Previously, Eric was a Chemistry professor at Duke University, where he authored nearly 300 publications. He also served as Director of ARPA-E, where he advanced wide-bandgap semiconductors and grid innovations. An inventor on over 30 patents, Eric co-founded three pharmaceutical companies and led Duke's Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative from 2012 to 2016. Originally trained as a bioorganic/physical organic chemist, he has dedicated his career to bridging science and impactful applications.

Alán Aspuru-Guzik is a professor of Chemistry and Computer Science at the University of Toronto and is also the Canada 150 Laureate in Theoretical Chemistry and a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute. He is a CIFAR Fellow co-directing the Accelerated Decarbonization program. Alán is the director of the Acceleration Consortium, a University of Toronto-based strategic initiative that aims to gather researchers from industry, government, and academia around pre-competitive research topics related to the lab of the future.

Thierry Giamarchi graduated from Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris and received his PhD from Paris XI University in 1987. He has been a permanent member of the french CNRS since 1986, and between 1990-1992 was a postdoc/visitor at Bell Laboratories. In 2002 he moved as a full professor to the Condensed Matter Department at the University of Geneva. Since 2013 he is a member of the French Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Physical Society. His research work deals with the effects of interactions in low dimensional quantum systems, such as Luttinger liquids, and on the effects of disorder in classical and quantum systems with works showing the existence of novel disordered phases such as the Bose glass and the Bragg glass.

Edoardo Baldini is an Assistant Professor of Physics at UT Austin. He received his PhD from EPFL in 2017 and was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT. His research combines condensed matter physics and ultrafast laser science to reveal and control emergent phases and collective excitations in quantum materials. His experiments provide benchmarks for many-body problems relevant to quantum simulation. His honors include the Sloan Fellowship, NSF CAREER Award, and IBM Prize in Condensed Matter Physics.

John Golden is a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). He received his Ph.D. in physics from Brown University in 2015, after which he was a Van Loo Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan, where he studied the intersection of particle physics and algebraic geometry. Since moving to LANL in 2019, his research has centered on quantum computing and its applications across a diverse range of fields, including PDEs, optimization, quantum chemistry, and materials science.

Stefanos Kourtis is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Physics and Computer Science at Université de Sherbrooke, where he holds the Institutional Research Chair in Quantum AI. He is an Associate Member at Mila - Québec AI Institute and an IVADO Researcher. He previously held a Research Chair in Quantum Computation of the Ministère de l'Économie, de l'Innovation et de l'Énergie of Québec. He works at the nexus of quantum theory, quantum computation, and statistical physics. He earned his PhD from Dresden University of Technology in 2014 and completed postdoctoral scholarships at the University of Cambridge, Princeton University, and Boston University.

Brigitte Leridon is a French physicist turned entrepreneur. After years researching quantum materials at CNRS/ESPCI Paris-PSL, she co-founded Pioniq Technologies, where she serves as CEO. The startup develops safer, all-solid battery technology built on quantum electrolytes, free from critical materials. Her mission: make energy storage safer and more sustainable, reducing dependence on scarce resources while cutting fire risks in batteries powering everything from electronics to AI infrastructures.

Barry Sanders holds two diplomas, a PhD and a DSc from Imperial College London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Optica, the American Physical Society, and the UK’s Institute of Physics. His distinctions include being named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes académiques by France in 2025, receiving the CDL Toronto Mentor of the Year Award in 2024, and receiving the City of Calgary International Achievement Award in 2022. His research focuses on quantum information and emerging dual-use technologies. He is the Scientific Director of Calgary’s Quantum City and a Senior Fellow at the Canadian Centre for International Governance and Innovation in Waterloo. He also advises CERN’s Open Quantum Institute, the quantum computing XPRIZE, as well as start-ups and investment funds. He serves on four editorial boards and has trained over 100 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers.

Joseph Vovrosh is a Senior Quantum Algorithm Developer at Pasqal, working in the Quantum Materials department. He completed his PhD at Imperial College London, where he studied the digital quantum simulation of one-dimensional spin models using superconducting NISQ quantum computers. His current research focuses on using neutral-atom quantum processors to investigate quantum materials and many-body phenomena accessible with these devices, while benchmarking quantum simulations against state-of-the-art classical methods.

Swastik Kar is a Professor of Physics at Northeastern University, Director of the Experiential Quantum Advancement Laboratories (EQUAL), Founding Deputy Director of the Quantum Materials and Sensing Institute (QMSI), and Principal Investigator of the Laboratory for 2D Quantum Materials. His research focuses on the synthesis, characterization, and engineering of quantum materials, including two-dimensional, layered, and thin-film systems. He is a pioneer in applying AI and machine learning to accelerate the synthesis of quantum materials and their applications.