Home Podcasts The New Quantum Era - innovation in quantum computing, science and technology
The New Quantum Era - innovation in quantum computing, science and technology

The New Quantum Era - innovation in quantum computing, science and technology

Sebastian Hassinger 95 Episodes Aug 17, 2026

Your host, Sebastian Hassinger, interviews brilliant research scientists, software developers, engineers and others actively exploring the possibilities of our new quantum era. We will cover topics in quantum computing, networking and sensing, focusing on hardware, algorithms and general theory. The show aims for accessibility - Sebastian is not a physicist - and we'll try to provide context for the terminology and glimpses at the fascinating history of this new field as it evolves in real time.

Episodes

Silicon Spin Qubits and the IBM–HRL Acquisition with Thaddeus D. Ladd
Silicon Spin Qubits and the IBM–HRL Acquisition with Thaddeus D. Ladd Aug 17, 2026 2661 Thaddeus Ladd has spent seventeen years at HRL as the theoretical anchor of its silicon spin qubit program — co-authoring the 2023 Nature paper that demonstrated universal logic with encoded spin qubits, and contributing to the 2026 QPU paper that integrated qubits, a cryo-CMOS controller, and a new superconducting ribbon cable into a single digitally controlled system. He is not a commen
Quantum in the Big Four with Aaron Kemp
Quantum in the Big Four with Aaron Kemp Aug 10, 2026 2665 Aaron Kemp sits at an unusual intersection. He holds a doctorate in cybersecurity, spent years in DoD classified environments running SCI and SAP facilities, and now leads KPMG's quantum research practice — where he's a co-author on a recent hybrid QML paper with Kipu Quantum and IBM. He's also the lead author of KPMG's Q-PREP framework, which pushes enterprises to treat post-quantum cryp
Investing in the Quantum Frontier and the Road to Fault Tolerance with Barak Bussel
Investing in the Quantum Frontier and the Road to Fault Tolerance with Barak Bussel Aug 3, 2026 2421 Barak Bussel is one of the few people operating simultaneously at three levels of the quantum stack: deploying private capital into hardware and software companies through 7i Capital, chairing the strategic board of a major university quantum center, and helping stand up the physical infrastructure — a 700,000 square foot research park on the site of the former Westside Pavilion — meant t
Building the U.S. Quantum Supply Chain with Kate Timmerman
Building the U.S. Quantum Supply Chain with Kate Timmerman Jul 27, 2026 2499 Kate Timmerman is the CEO of the Chicago Quantum Exchange (CQE), and she is arguably one of the most consequential ecosystem builders in quantum today. Under her leadership, the CQE has grown from three founding institutions in 2017 to a coalition of more than 50 industry and academic partners, and the region has secured designation as a top global quantum ecosystem through The Bloch Quan
The Open Source Substrate for Quantum with Ben Castanon
The Open Source Substrate for Quantum with Ben Castanon Jul 20, 2026 2627 Ben Castanon became Unitary Foundation's first CEO in February 2026, after roughly four years with the organization as Chief of Staff and then COO. He came into quantum from an unusual direction — leadership roles at Pioneer Works, the Brooklyn arts-and-science center — and that background shows in how he thinks about scaffolding communities, funding public goods, and borrowing what works
Quantum Cameras and Sub-Diffraction Imaging with Johannes Galatsanos
Quantum Cameras and Sub-Diffraction Imaging with Johannes Galatsanos Jul 13, 2026 2964 Johannes Galatsanos occupies an unusual dual perch in the quantum ecosystem. As a co-author of the inaugural MIT Quantum Index Report, he's helped map the entire quantum landscape at altitude; as co-founder and CEO of Diffraqtion, he's staked his career on one of its most under-discussed corners: quantum imaging. The company spun out of Saikat Guha's lab at the University of Maryland afte
Episode 100: Live at Barnes & Thornburg — Reflections on the First 100 Episodes
Episode 100: Live at Barnes & Thornburg — Reflections on the First 100 Episodes Jul 6, 2026 4798 This is the 100th episode of The New Quantum Era, and it arrives at a moment of convergence: the book is out, the Helgoland centennial documentary is in production, regional quantum ecosystems are scaling from ambition to construction, and the field is entering the transition from heroic-era qubit demos to the hard systems engineering that will determine whether quantum computing becomes
Quantum EDA for Ion Trap Design with Daniel Faircloth
Quantum EDA for Ion Trap Design with Daniel Faircloth Jun 29, 2026 2322 Daniel Faircloth, PhD is an unusual figure in the quantum ecosystem: a computational electromagnetics engineer who actually helped build trapped-ion hardware before pivoting to the software stack the field was missing. He's a co-author on the 2013 New Journal of Physics paper that demonstrated reliable ion transport through a microfabricated X-junction surface-electrode trap at Georgia Te
Electrons on Superfluid Helium with Nick Farina
Electrons on Superfluid Helium with Nick Farina Jun 22, 2026 2506 EeroQ is unusual in two ways. It's the only company in the world commercializing electrons-on-helium qubits, a modality first proposed by Platzman and Dykman in Science in 1999. And it was founded by Nick Farina — a software entrepreneur, not a physicist — who got pulled into the field through a Chicago theater board where he met his future co-founder, then-PhD student Johannes Pollanen.T
Quantum Drug Discovery and the Path to Advantage with Sabrina Maniscalco
Quantum Drug Discovery and the Path to Advantage with Sabrina Maniscalco Jun 15, 2026 2709 Why This Episode MattersSabrina Maniscalco is one of the few people in quantum who has lived the full arc: two decades of academic work on open quantum systems and non-Markovian noise at Palermo, Turku, Edinburgh, and Helsinki, followed by founding Algorithmiq with three of her former researchers after an early Qiskit Camp. That trajectory matters now because Algorithmiq just had a landma
Funding the Quantum Middle: Series A/B Capital with Kris Naudts and Zeynep Koruturk of Firgun Ventures
Funding the Quantum Middle: Series A/B Capital with Kris Naudts and Zeynep Koruturk of Firgun Ventures Jun 8, 2026 2762 Why This Episode MattersFirgun Ventures launched in late 2025 with a $70M first close anchored by the Qatar Investment Authority and a mandate that doesn't exist anywhere else in the market: lead Series A and B rounds in quantum scale-ups globally. Kris Naudts is a neuroscientist and former Culture Trip founder whose path to quantum runs through a near-fatal medical misdiagnosis. Zeynep K
Quantum Book Launch with Yuval Boger
Quantum Book Launch with Yuval Boger Jun 1, 2026 3274 Why This Episode MattersYuval has a rare profile in the quantum industry: an M.Sc. in physics from Tel Aviv University, an MBA from Kellogg, two decades as a CEO and CMO in deep tech before quantum, and now the commercial lead at QuEra — the company whose neutral-atom architecture is colocated with NVIDIA H100s inside Japan's ABCI-Q supercomputer and just demonstrated 96 logical qubits fr

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