Committees

Taryn Stefanski graduated from Michigan State University in 2019 with a BSc in physics. She then received her MSc in physics from the University of Bristol (2020) where she studied coherence properties of quantum dots. She began the Quantum Engineering Centre for Doctoral Training programme at the University of Bristol in 2020 through which she has become a visiting PhD student within Christian Andersen’s lab in QuTech as of October 2021, where she will be investigating high speed and high fidelity readout and implementation of single qubit gates on superconducting fluxonium qubits.

In her spare time, Taryn likes to do crafts, ice skate, play board games, and do puzzles. She is hoping to use her time in the Netherlands to learn Dutch and eat lots of poffertjes alongside her research.

Judith is a Project Coordinator with 7+ years of experience. Currently, she fulfill two occupations, as Project Leader Diversity and Inclusion at the Dutch Research Institute (NWO-I) and as Project Coordinator for Women in Quantum Development. At WIQD she steers the Organising Committee, manages the budget, oversees overall progress, the diversity and inclusion plan and sets out the strategy for the upcoming years together with the Steering Committee in which she takes part. At NWO-I she coordinates the implementation and further development of the Diversity and Inclusion plan in collaboration with all nine Dutch Research Institutes at NWO-I.

Sayr Motz (any pronouns) is WIQD‘s newest student assistant who supports the organizing committee with communication and project-related work. Sayr is from West Milton, Ohio, USA and is currently a scientist, performer, nanny, and community organizer. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Pittsburgh with substantial research experience in superconducting qubits with the Hatlab, Sayr moved to the Netherlands to pursue a master’s degree in Applied Physics at TU Delft. Their master’s thesis research in the Veldhorst lab at QuTech focuses on scalability in Ge quantum dot arrays.

Initially, their professional interests revolved solely around experimental quantum computing, but in the past few years has expanded to also include their equally important passion for performance art and community advocacy. They are a founding member of the creative performing group Haus of 4D and frequently organize events that serve the needs of local LGBTQIA+ associations in Delft and the Hague. Now and in the future, Sayr’s professional life will continue to intersect their passions and talents in science, creativity, and community work.

Caiseal is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering exploring Quantum Human-Computer Interaction and developing new mental models of quantum computing to improve accessibility.

Alicja is currently working towards her PhD in quantum estimation at Leiden University, with the focus on quantum simulation for near-term quantum computers. Prior to this, she also completed a research master’s at Leiden with a thesis on Quantum Phase Estimation. Alicja is passionate about inclusivity and intersectional representation. She is excited to be part of WIQD’s work to spread these values and foster support networks in the scientific community.

Rima joined the University of Amsterdam as a Postdoc in 2020. She holds a PhD in Nuclear Physics for which she did research at the Max Planck Institute, Germany.

Ghazaleh Ghobadi holds a Ph.D. in medical physics and has years of research experience in Dutch academic hospitals. Her path from Iran to the Netherlands ignited a passion for bridging connections through stories. In a bold career shift, Ghazaleh now practices storytelling professionally. This together with her scientific expertise allows her to make complex concepts accessible and engaging. Believing in the power of collective efforts for change, she dares to address political and social issues through her stories and shed light on injustices that demand attention. Ghazaleh also advocates for introducing art, mindfulness, and storytelling into workplaces to nurture well-being and personal growth.

Kendall Behr is a seasoned technical copywriter with a passion for transforming complex concepts into clear and comprehensible language. With over five years of dedicated experience in the field, Kendall’s journey in the world of technical writing began with a deep fascination for technology and an unwavering commitment to bridging the gap between technical experts and the general audience. Her unique talent lies in taking the most convoluted technical jargon and unravelling it into plain, accessible prose that anyone can understand.

Robert Baker is Founder and CEO of Potentia Talent Consulting which advises organisations on building diverse, equitable and inclusive cultures and workplaces. This enables them to meet the key business challenges of disruption, innovation and growth. Robert also coaches individual leaders to achieve their full potential and is a keen proponent of the growth mindset.

Robert is a thought leader on diversity & inclusion and on engaging men as allies to support gender equality: at work, at home and in all aspects of life. In recognition of his achievements in supporting women in the workplace, he was named a Top 50 Gender Equity Trailblazer for 2023 by WeAreTheCity.

Robert is past Co-President of PWN Global, a major global women’s network. He currently sits on the Board of One Loud Voice For Women and is an Advisory Board Member for the Sister Sister Network.

He was elected as a Companion to the Chartered Management Institute in 2019 and joined an elite group of 500 business leaders working together to advance leadership and management.

Robert has spoken at numerous conferences and has contributed to many podcasts, publications and blogs on the importance of engaging men in gender equity.

You can follow Robert on Linked-In http://linkedin.com/in/robert-baker-potentia-talent-consulting and on Twitter at @robertbkr.

Stacey Jeffery has been a Senior Researcher at CWI, affiliated with QuSoft, since January 2017. Before that, she was an IQIM Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter (IQIM) at Caltech. She received her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo in 2014, where she was affiliated with the Institute for Quantum Computing.

Stacey’s research is in applications of quantum computers, including quantum algorithms and cryptographic protocols. In particular she has worked on frameworks for facilitating the design of quantum algorithms. She is also interested in the theoretical limits of quantum computers, such as lower bounds on time and space.

Stacey co-founded WIQD because she feels that she has benefited immensely from a professional support network of other women, and wanted to ensure that others have the opportunity to develop a similar network, as well as gain exposure to a variety of role models with diverse approaches to work and life.

Since October 2020, Lisa Kohl is a researcher in the Cryptology Group at CWI Amsterdam headed by Ronald Cramer. A special focus of her work lies in exploring new directions in secure computation with the goal of developing practical post-quantum secure protocols.

Before coming to CWI, Lisa worked as a postdoctoral researcher with Yuval Ishai at Technion. In 2019, she completed her PhD at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology under the supervision of Dennis Hofheinz. During her PhD, she spent eight months in the FACT center at IDC Herzliya for a research visit with Elette Boyle. Lisa got to know the CWI Cryptology Group already back in 2015, when she wrote her master’s thesis there as a visiting student.

Evert is an assistant professor at Leiden University, and is embedded within the applied quantum algorithms group there. He focuses on machine learning and artificial intelligence for quantum physics, with topics including from detecting phase transitions, AI-assisted (quantum) experiments and representation learning of quantum states. In addition, he is actively involved in quantum outreach, and is the creator of the quantum game TiqTaqToe available at tiqtaqtoe.com

Ingrid Romijn holds a PhD in physics and has previously worked at TNO as researcher, project lead and program manager on solar cells technology.

 Ingrid joined QuTech (a collaboration between TUDelft and TNO) as program manager in 2018. In 2019, she was part of the team to create and write the Dutch National Agenda for Quantum Technology. From 2020 – 2022 Ingrid worked for the Quantum Delta Foundation as program manager for the National Quantum Network (CAT-2) program.

 Ingrid is also one of the co-founders of Q*Bird B.V., a startup (2022) from QuTech. Q*Bird’s mission is to provide equipment for the current, and future quantum internet.

Arghavan works on quantum simulation at IoP at UvA. She studies complex quantum systems using advanced computational techniques and quantum simulation. She has worked in collaboration with both theorists and experimentalists on a broad range of quantum simulation and quantum computation platforms, including trapped-ion architectures.

Romana Schirhagl received her PhD in chemistry in 2009 from the University of Vienna where she also studies biology as a second subject. She then went on to do postdoc at Stanford and ETH Zurich where she fell in love with quantum sensing. In 2014 she started her group at Groningen University where she applies NV center based sensing to biomedical applications. For more information, see https://www.bioanalysisgroup.com/.

Yvonne Smit is a science communicator, speaker, moderator, host and teacher. She was the chair of WIQD for the first two year. And now works freelance as Coordinator Communication and Impact for WIQD, as well as as serving on its organizing and steering committees.

Before starting as a freelancer she worked for QuSoft as a communication advisor. But she started as a scientist and received her PhD in Physical Geography from the Utrecht University in 2019 for which she investigated how coastal dunes grow by aeolian sand transport.

During her work as a scientist she found that next to doing research, her passion also lies with science communication. She always asked herself,

“What is the use of science when nobody is communicating their results in an understandable way?”

Therefore, after her PhD she started working as the editor-in-chief for the online science communication platform – University of the Netherlands.

By joining WIQD Yvonne hopes to stimulate female scientists in the field of quantum development and empower them to continue their dreams; as an educator, scientist or communicator, whatever their passion is.

Iris Vink has been working as a People professional for over 10 years, primarily within tech scale-ups. Earlier this year, she joined QuantWare as Head of People.

Holding a master’s degree in Art History, and working within the field of HR, she’s completely new to the world of physics and is interested to learn as much as she can about quantum from the people around her.

During her studies she explored themes such as gender issues and ethnic bias in western art.

Within her role, she is responsible for People and Culture. She’s passionate about finding ways to increase diversity and inclusion in the workplace and believes all people leaders should do their part to foster a truly inclusive culture where every employee can thrive and do their best work.

Ever since she heard about Schrodinger’s cat, Anne-Marije (she/her) is fascinated by the counterintuitive concepts of quantum physics. She studied both ‘Physics’ and ‘System Engineering & Management’ at the Delft University of Technology, with a physics Master thesis focused on the Quantum Internet.

She performed her doctoral research at QuTech. In the group of Lieven Vandersypen, she studied electron spin in semiconductors in order to dive deeper into the quantum world and stretch up the boundaries of what we know nowadays. Currently, she is launching a quantum startup and is the 2023 recipient of the Minerva Prize for her accomplishments as a woman in physics.

Anne-Marije likes to share her fascination of quantum mechanics. To that end, she developed (and taught) courses on Quantum Computing for high school students and shares her quantum passion as a speaker, panelist, or on podcasts. When not in the lab, she loves speed skating, running and wind surfing.

Photo Credit: Graphdude/Casimir

Freeke Heijman is director strategic development at QuTech in Delft and special advisor to the Minister of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy on Quantum Technologies. In this context she is responsible for the Dutch national policy and investments in Quantum Technology, international partnerships such as the NL participation in the EU flagship and development of the Delft Quantum Campus ecosystem. She is a 50-50 liaison between the Ministry and the QuTech Center and represents The Netherlands in European committees such as the FET Flagship Board of Funders. She has extensive experience in European and national space, industrial and innovation policies including in the role of head of unit. She graduated at the TU Delft Policy Analysis and Systems Engineering department in 1999 and started her career at KPN Research. Her passion is to drive innovation at the crossroad of academia, business and government.

Tanja Lange is chair of the Coding Theory and Cryptology group at TU Eindhoven. She is a leading researcher in post-quantum cryptography: a hot field that designs and studies cryptographic systems that are secure even against future attackers equipped with a large-scale quantum computer.

Tanja is a prolific academic who has published numerous papers. She is an active member of the cryptographic community: She has served on lots of program
committees, including as program chair, organized many conferences and workshops, and is a great lecturer. Moreover, Tanja is active in the standardization of cryptographic systems and works together with the industry to get her systems deployed. You might be using some of her crypto in your phone or laptop!

Christian Schaffner received a diploma degree in mathematics from ETH Zurich (Switzerland) in 2003 and a PhD degree in computer science from Aarhus University (Denmark) in 2007. After being a postdoctoral scholar at CWI Amsterdam and faculty member at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) at University of Amsterdam, he is now full professor in Theoretical Computer Science and group leader of the Theory of Computer Science (TCS) group at the Informatics Institute at University of Amsterdam.  He is a senior researcher at QuSoft, the Dutch research center for quantum software. Christian is a world-leading expert in quantum cryptography, both on post-quantum cryptography and on the design and analysis of protocols that solve cryptographic problems involving quantum data and quantum communication.

 “As chair of the Talent & Outreach committee of the Quantum Software Consortium (QSC) and the QDNL network hub Quantum.Amsterdam, I care a lot about educating and supporting a diverse quantum workforce on all levels. I believe that WIQD can play an important role towards this goal.”

Barbara Terhal has been a professor at the EEMCS Department at TU Delft and a staff member at QuTech since 2017. She received her PhD degree Cum Laude from the University of Amsterdam in 1999 on “Quantum Algorithms and Quantum Entanglement”, making her the first person to get a PhD in quantum computing in the Netherlands.

During her PhD, Barbara developed the concept of an entanglement witness as opposed to a Bell inequality test for the detection of quantum entanglement. After her PhD, she was a postdoc at IBM Research at Yorktown Heights, NY and at Caltech, before returning to IBM as research staff member in 2001.

In 2010 she left IBM to become professor in theoretical physics at RWTH Aachen University, supplemented by a position at FZ Juelich from 2015 until present. She has been a fellow of the American Physical Society since 2007 and a distinguished visiting research chair at Perimeter Institute since 2014.

Barbara has a long-standing interest and track-record in quantum error correction and fault-tolerance. She views a scalable implementation of quantum error correction as one of the great challenges in physics today.

Barbara got involved in WIQD because she is happy to support activities that strengthen diversity and enhance communication within the scientific community.

Stephanie Wehner is Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Professor at Delft University of Technology. As Roadmap Leader Quantum Internet and Networked Computing she is responsible for QuTech’s quantum networks objectives. Her passion is quantum communication in all its facets, and she has written numerous scientific articles in both physics and computer science. Stephanie is one the founders of QCRYPT, which has become the largest conference in quantum cryptography, the coordinator of the Quantum Internet Alliance, and has been awarded the KNAW Ammodo Science Award 2019. From 2010 to 2014, her research group was located at the Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore, where she was first Assistant and later Associate Professor. Previously, she was a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology in the group of John Preskill. In a former life, she worked as a professional hacker in industry.