KNOWLEDGE

Ray Smets is President and CEO of Quantum Circuits and a member of the board.

Prior to joining Quantum Circuits, Ray held executive leadership positions in companies spanning multiple high-tech domains, including computing, security, and networking. Most recently, Ray was CEO of Napatech A/S, a publicly listed network interface market share leader servicing global enterprise, data center, cloud, and telecom customers. Previously, he held leadership positions driving Cisco’s $1B+ wireless LAN business, Motorola’s cable modem business, McAfee Security’s network probes and security business, and AT&T’s cloud networking business.

Ray graduated from the University of Florida College of Engineering in Computer Science, earned an MBA, and is an alumnus of Stanford University’s Executive Program.

Robert Schoelkopf is a Co-Founder of Quantum Circuits and serves as its Chief Scientist. He is widely known as one of the founders of the superconducting quantum computing field.

Rob is the Sterling Professor of Applied Physics and Physics at Yale University and a member of the National Academy of Science. His stream of inventions and lifetime work shapes much of the way scientists, technology companies, and global enterprises approach quantum computing academically and commercially. He and his co-founders’ approach serves as the basis for hundreds of academic papers and more than 100,000 citations from researchers. It is also the defining and differentiating factor that sets Quantum Circuits apart from other quantum companies, many of which are comprised of teams with former students or researchers who were educated or worked under Rob in Yale’s labs.

Rob and his collaborators at Yale are leaders in the development of solid-state quantum bits for quantum computing, inventing new methods of achieving higher fidelity through error detection and correction built into the qubit. This work has been recognized with several awards, including Joseph F. Keithley Award of the American Physical Society, the Max Planck Forschungspreis, and together with his colleague Michel Devoret, the John Stewart Bell Prize, Fritz London Memorial Prize, and Comstock Award in Physics.

Rob graduated from Princeton University and earned his Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology. From 1986 to 1988 he was an electrical/cryogenic engineer in the Laboratory for High-Energy Astrophysics at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where he developed low-temperature radiation detectors and cryogenic instrumentation for space missions. He came to Yale as a postdoctoral researcher in 1995, joined the faculty in 1998, and became a full professor in 2003. He is also the Director of the Yale Quantum Institute.

Luigi Frunzio is a Co-Founder and the Chief Technologist of Quantum Circuits. He is a Senior Research Scientist at Yale University in the Department of Applied Physics and Director, Cleanroom Quantum Foundry.

Since 2003, Luigi has been collaborating with Michel Devoret, Dan Prober and Rob Schoelkopf at Yale on superconducting microwave, sub-millimiter and UV/Optical detectors to develop new superconducting qubit and amplifiers for fault-tolerant, error-corrected modular bosonic quantum computation.

Prior to his work at Yale, Luigi earned a doctorate in Physics at the University “Federico II” of Napoli, Italy, in 1990 with a dissertation on “Effects of intrinsic fluctuations in current biased Josephson Tunnel Junctions”, advised by Prof. Arturo Tagliacozzo and Dr. Roberto Cristiano. In 2006, he received a Ph.D. in Physics at the University Paris-Sud XI in Orsay, France, with a dissertation on “Design and fabrication of superconducting circuits for amplification and processing of quantum signals”, advised by Marc Gabay and Michel Devoret and prepared while being a W. M. Keck Fellow.

Olivier joined Quantum Circuits as Chief Technology Officer with 25 years of experience integrating and maturing new technologies into complex hardware and software systems at scale.

Previously he was VP of Hardware Engineering at Samsara, responsible for architecting and designing wireless telematic gateways and AI cameras for monitoring complex physical operations and people who operate large fleets of vehicles. He led teams of firmware, radio, electrical, mechanical and product designers with a focus on innovation, high-volume production and high reliability in the field.

Prior to Samsara, Olivier spent nine years as founder and CEO of a product design consultancy that brought more than 1 million new devices with unique novel concepts to market. The company delivered connected devices (IOT), mobile phones, consumer cameras, and secure payment terminals.

Originally, Olivier designed smartphones for Palm Computing and Philips, where he focused on integrating cutting-edge technologies in low-power architectures, wireless technologies, and challenging new form factors.

Olivier holds a Masters in electronic and computer science from EFREI in Paris.

Much of Harvey’s career has focused on conceiving and developing technologies to advance cosmology and astrophysics. He was a key member of the Cosmic Background Explorer science and development team, whose leaders Mather and Smoot won the 2006 Nobel Physics prize for its groundbreaking measurements of the early universe.

Harvey has rich experience with complex systems operating at cryogenic temperatures. He invented and led the advance of cryogenic X-ray microcalorimeters, which are central to the scientific capability of current and future X-ray astrophysics missions. He also led the creation of microshutter arrays that provide multi-object spectroscopy on the James Webb Space Telescope. This innovation enables astronomers and scientists to study the evolution of the earliest galaxies.

Harvey has received the Joseph Weber prize of the American Astronomical Society, the George Goddard Prize of the international society of optics and photonics, SPIE, and was conferred the rank of Distinguished Senior Professional by President Barack Obama.

Stephen has 35 years of software and systems experience driving innovation in several technology markets, including autonomous driving, mobile phones, and instrumentation.

Prior to Quantum Circuits, Stephen was Chief Engineer and Director of Product at TuSimple, where he led the design and development of the world’s first Level 4, AI–powered “virtual driver” system that was successfully run on public roads. He was Global Head of Autonomous Driving Software at Stellantis where he and his team built L3-L4 software solutions for Jeep, Maserati, Dodge RAM, and Chrysler Pacifica.

He also served as Senior Director of Software Product for 3G/4G Smartphones at Qualcomm, where he helped define and develop the original Snapdragon SoC and software stack, which is in more than 80 percent of the world’s 15 billion mobile phones. He drove the Partner OS team which developed the world’s first 4G smartphones running Android, Blackberry, Chrome, and Windows Mobile operating systems on ARM-based embedded SoCs.

Previously, he was Director of Software for Advanced Instrumentation at Thermo Electron where he helped develop the world’s largest high resolution X-ray sensor for medical imaging. He worked at a Xerox Parc lab programming symbolic instruction set computing machines.

Stephen holds a Masters in Applied Mathematics & Algorithms from USC and a Bachelors in Theoretical & Experimental Physics from Pomona College. He has 17 issued patents with more pending in software and systems.

Andrei Petrenko spearheads the product strategy at Quantum Circuits with a keen focus on fostering a strong customer ecosystem and user experience with the company’s unique, differentiable features. He has nearly 15 years of experience in quantum computing across industry and academia. His background is in quantum hardware, and he received his Ph.D. from Yale University in the lab of Professor Rob Schoelkopf, focusing on quantum error correction.

As one of the first employees of Quantum Circuits, Andrei built key areas of the company’s product and software stack. He was instrumental in defining the hardware roadmap. Over time, this has led to successful engagements with key external partners, full-stack cloud deployments of Quantum Circuits’ cloud services, and control system deployments with cutting-edge features.

Andrei speaks regularly as an industry expert, providing Quantum Circuits with a public voice to convey its novel superconducting architecture to science and commercial audiences.

Andrei loves to spend time with his family and friends around a campfire in New Hampshire and teaching his kids how to do a cannonball at the local pool.

Allen Dinh leads Quantum Circuits’ Finance team as Head of Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) and Administration.

He has more than 20 years of experience building global finance, administration and operations teams focused on FP&A, forecasting, operational excellence, and making decisions that have steered the financial growth and direction of various technology companies.

Prior to joining Quantum Circuits, Allen was Vice President of Finance and Sales Operations at Informatica and A10 Networks, both of which had successful IPOs listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Allen also worked as Head of Finance at Metaswitch, a Sequoia-backed British networking company that was acquired by Microsoft. He has extensive finance experience at Cisco Systems, Redback Networks, and Ericsson.

Mowaffak Midani is the Head of Solutions Architecture at Quantum Circuits operating at the intersection of business and technology. His mission includes building strategic relations and alliances with scientists, analysts, partners, and customers to apply quantum computing innovation to practical solutions for a wide range of applications.

Prior to joining Quantum Circuits, Mowaffak was the COO of VizLore LLC, a company providing AI/ML/4IR solutions for smart living and smart cities. In addition, Mowaffak held various technical and executive management positions at top-tier technology companies, including AT&T Bell Labs, Alcatel, Motorola, and Pipeline Technologies & Services, where he led the company to design and manufacture AI-based automation systems for the energy sector.

Mowaffak has been a scientist, an engineer, and an engineering executive for more than 30 years in the areas of telecommunications, industrial automation, physics, and artificial intelligence. He is founder/co-founder of three telecommunication companies in the United States and a holder of six U.S. patents in telecommunications and AI-based brain-computer Interface (BCI) technology. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Wayne State University and a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Arizona State University. He was previously a faculty member at Kankakee College, Department of Science and Technology, in Illinois.

Sean Weinberg is the Director of Applications at Quantum Circuits. He leads a team that designs quantum algorithms, applications, and simulators for a new generation of error-aware quantum hardware, partnering closely with large enterprise customers who are exploring quantum applications for commercial use cases.

Sean has worked in quantum startups since 2019, starting with QC Ware where he helped enterprises plan for quantum computing and investigate use cases. He has a strong interest and rich expertise in the long-term interplay of machine learning and quantum computing.

He earned a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley. He has B.A. degrees in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Chicago. Sean did his postdoc at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in physics with a focus on quantum information theory and quantum gravity.​

Tom Lubinski is the Senior Technical Advisor at Quantum Circuits. He advises the company on best software practices and architectures for complex systems and was also a member of the advisory board.

He previously founded SL Corporation, where he led the company as its president and CEO for 37 years. He was instrumental in developing SL’s Graphical Modeling System software and Enterprise RTView, a real-time monitoring, analytics and visualization platform, and was involved in thousands of successful customer deployments of real-time visibility solutions.

Prior to starting SL Corporation, Tom attended the California Institute of Technology and developed a substantial consulting practice specializing in object-oriented programming and graphical visualization systems. He has more than 40 years of experience in the development of computer hardware systems and software applications.

Neil is an award-winning marketing and communications executive who has led global teams at a variety of tech firms – from Dow Jones Component and bellwether stock companies to small-caps and pre-IPO unicorns. He is an adviser for startups and has been a CMO for various companies.

Recently, Neil served as CMO at Onit, a legal tech company transitioning to a broader enterprise software brand. He was CMO at Behavox, establishing the Marketing function for the early-stage compliance and security company. He was Vice President of Worldwide Marketing for Apttus, where he evolved the enterprise software company’s brand and transitioned demand generation for growth at scale. He also was Executive Vice President at A10 Networks, a public company specializing in security and application networking, and Vice President of Marketing at Armor Defense, a secure managed cloud provider for HIPAA and PCI-compliant data protection.

Earlier in his career, Neil led marketing communications and PR teams at some of the world’s largest tech companies. He led multiple teams for Cisco, providing market visibility for nearly two-thirds of the Dow Jones component’s business – its largest multi-billion-dollar business units (routing, switching), biggest growth opportunities (data center, cloud, software-defined networking), security, wireless networking, application networking, and Strategic Alliances. The media named Neil one of the tech industry’s top-15 PR pros, and he helped lead Cisco’s PR organization that was named by PRWeek two years in a row as the profession’s best in-house team across all industries. In addition to Cisco, Neil was head of worldwide PR at bellwether chip maker Micron and head of marketing communications at cybersecurity firm Trend Micro.

Neil has a B.A. in English from the University of California, Davis, and a M.S. in mass communications from San Jose State University.