New Strategic Advisory Board for the Quantum Flagship

The European Commission has announced the new Strategic Advisory Board (SAB) for the Quantum Technology Flagship, which celebrated its first meeting yesterday. The group's main task is to provide advice for strategic decision-making and assist the Commission concerning the implementation of existing Union legislation, programmes, and policies.

The SAB was founded with the launch of the Quantum Flagship in October of 2018. As the mandate of current members was coming to an end, the Commission has called for applications earlier in June to renew the membership of the group. The selected members constitute a group of high-level representatives, including independent experts from academia, research and technology institutions and organizations from the industry sector.

Sixteen experts from academia and industry

As a result of the call, they have selected nine individual experts, appointed according to their personal capacities, and industry representative experts, appointed on behalf of their companies. The new SAB will be chaired by Jürgen Mlynek, Professor of Experimental Physics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Germany) and former President of the Helmholtz Association of National Research Centres. The Board will also have as experts Ana Sanpera, ICREA Professor of quantum information at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain); Andreas Tuennermann, director of the Fraunhofer Institute of Applied Optics and Precision Engineering in Jena (Germany); Iuliana Radu, Director of Quantum and Exploratory Computing at imec (The Netherlands); Massimo Inguscio, Professor of Physics at LENS & the University of Florence and former president of the Italian National Research Council (Italy); Pascale Senellart-Mardon, CNRS research director at the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology of the CNRS and University Paris Saclay and a lecturer at Ecole Polytechnique (France); Radu Ionicioiu, researcher at the Department of Theoretical Physics of the Horia Hulubei National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering (Romania); Rogier Verberk, Director of Semiconductor Equipment, Quantum Technologies, Smart Industry, Medical Instrumentation at TNO (The Netherlands), and Vladimir Buzek, Professor of Theoretical Physics and researcher at the Institute of Physics, of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (Slovakia).

Moreover, the new Board also includes seven companies and industry organizations. They are represented by Dr Johanna Sepulveda, from Airbus; Carlos Kuchkovsky from AMETIC; Fabio Cavaliere from Ericsson; Laure Le Bars, from the European Quantum Industry Consortium (QuiC); Dr. Stephan Schaecher from Infineon Technologies AG, Jaya Baloo, Vice-Chair of KPN and Adam Piotrowsky from VIGO System S.A.