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Blond & Quantum Episode 16: Quantum sensors that navigate without GPS | Dr. Karsten Pyka, Lead Technology Development – Quantum Sensing at the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), Abu Dhabi

What happens to navigation when GPS goes dark? Dr. Karsten Pyka builds the quantum sensors designed for exactly that moment. At TII's Quantum Research Center in Abu Dhabi, his team is developing a levitated-particle inertial sensor — a tiny test mass floating in ultra-high vacuum — that tracks motion so precisely you can follow your own trajectory with no satellites, no signal and no GPS.

Karsten's path runs from optical clocks and ion traps in Braunschweig and Hannover, to quantum simulation in Sydney, to automotive innovation and satellite systems engineering at OHB in Munich, and finally to Abu Dhabi in 2021, where he and his wife — also a quantum physicist — joined a brand-new quantum center on day one.

Listen to find out:

📍 How a quantum inertial sensor works, explained with a lamp, a moving room and a crowd throwing tennis balls

📍 Why GPS-free navigation, vibration sensing and geological monitoring are the first realistic markets for quantum sensing

📍 What optical clocks are, and why the definition of the second may soon move from cesium to light

📍 How the UAE's Advanced Technology Research Council and TII fit into Abu Dhabi's push to diversify into deep tech

📍 Which quantum sensing claim makes him roll his eyes: the quantum radar

📍 Why systems thinking, learned in satellite engineering, is the skill that carries across physics, industry and quantum

📍 What's next at TII: navigation built on quantum magnetic sensors

Why it matters: quantum computing gets the headlines, but quantum sensing is where quantum technology is closest to real products. Navigation that doesn't depend on satellites is a question of resilience for aviation, shipping, defense and critical infrastructure, and the Gulf is investing to be part of that answer.

Guest: Dr. Karsten Pyka leads technology development in quantum sensing at the Technology Innovation Institute's Quantum Research Center in Abu Dhabi. He holds a PhD in ion-trap physics and optical clocks, did his postdoc in quantum simulation in Sydney, and worked in automotive innovation and as a systems engineer at OHB before joining TII in 2021.

Blond & Quantum is hosted by Eva Galant. Each episode features a leader from the quantum ecosystem — researchers, founders, and investors — for a laid-back conversation about how quantum technology is shaping the world without the equations. New episodes drop regularly. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Xet5wXJYFeU

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Blond & Quantum start-up series episode 7: The tiny chips protecting banks, hospitals and governments  | Francesco Raffaelli | CTO at KETS Quantum Security.

We asked a quantum security CTO where he wants his technology to be in ten years.

He said he would like you not to see it at all.

Francesco Raffaelli is CTO of KETS Quantum Security in Bristol, and he builds quantum key distribution onto silicon chips. His reasoning is a business argument, not a physics one: conventional QKD is assembled from discrete fibre-optic components, and "it would take a day to set up one, and a thousand days to set up a thousand." Put it on a photonic integrated circuit made in a standard semiconductor foundry, and volume becomes a repeat order.

Which leads to the least glamorous and most important slide in quantum security: nobody is going to let a vendor install a standalone box inside their telecom infrastructure. So KETS is not selling boxes. It is selling a card the size of a laptop that slots into equipment that already exists, sharing the power supply and the fibre already running through it.

In this episode with Eva Galant:

📍 Why post-quantum cryptography will cover most of the world — and why banks, grids and hospitals will still want a hardware layer underneath it
📍 The cleanest framing of the whole debate we have heard: "Quantum computers attack software. QKD lives in optical fibres."
📍 Why he says quantum computing is supported massively in the UK, and quantum key distribution is not
📍 Why the chip is no longer the most expensive part of his system — and what that tells investors
📍 Satellite links, and the QKD transmitter they flew on a drone

Thank you, Francesco, for an hour of straight answers — including the ones about your own industry's gaps.

#QuantumComputing #DeepTech #QuantumTechnology #BlondAndQuantum #QKD #Cybersecurity

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Blond & Quantum Episode 12: Einstein was wrong — and onto something fantastic | Prof. Alain Aspect. Nobel Prize winner in Physics 2022 Co-founder of Pasqal

Professor Alain Aspect won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2022 for proving entanglement is real — after being warned the work would destroy his career. He tells Eva Galant why the switch that made his experiment possible came out of a student debate, how Pasqal started inside his own institute, why he would put his bet on quantum at fifty per cent, and why "you cannot really accelerate basic ideas just by dumping money on it."

He has also written the book for anyone who wants the long version of this story: "Si Einstein avait su", It will published in English from MIT Press as "If Einstein Had Known" very soon.

Listen to find out:

📍Why the first question John Bell asked me was not about physics. It was whether I had a permanent position.

📍 Why he told me to publish my idea rather than keep it secret — and why that mattered forty years later.

📍 Why the switch itself — the piece I had to invent to make Bell's suggestion possible — came out of a debate between my students and not out of the lab. I love teaching, and I am not sure I would have found it otherwise.

📍 Why you cannot really accelerate basic ideas just by dumping money on them — and why I am nonetheless enthusiastic about the link between academic research and startups.

📍Why, if I had to bet on quantum computing, I would say fifty per cent — and why I fully disagree with colleagues who say it will never work.

🎙️ Guest: Prof. Alain Aspect | Nobel Prize winner in Physics 2022. Co-founder of Pasqal

🎧 Host: Eva Galant | Blond & Quantum

#QuantumComputing #DeepTech #VentureCapital #BlondAndQuantum #Entanglement #QuantumTechnology

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Blond & Quantum Episode 11: Someone is stealing your data right now to decrypt it later | Dr. Yaakov Weinstein, Chief Scientist Officer for Quantum Technologies at MITRE

Everyone in quantum will give you a date. Dr. Yaakov Weinstein gives you a graph. As Chief Scientist Officer for Quantum Technologies at MITRE — tells the U.S. Department of Defense, the intelligence community and DHS what in quantum is real and what is marketing — he joins Eva Galant on Blond & Quantum to explain why MITRE's public report puts the breaking of RSA-2048 in 2055–2060, and why the most useful thing you can hand a decision-maker is a number that carries no hype.

Listen to find out:
📍 Quantum error correction explained using one word — “yes” — and why measurement is the thing that makes it hard
📍 Why the man with ~3,000 citations in error correction wonders whether the codes are too fancy, and whether we should just build better qubits instead
📍 The RSA-2048 graph: built entirely from the companies' own published metrics, shown to those companies, and why nobody argues with the data — only about who will break the trend
📍 “My job would be easier if the word ‘breakthrough’ wasn't attached to everything” — how to separate real signal from quarterly announcements
📍 The most underrated field in quantum — sensors — and what he means by “practicing quantum”

From a whim application to MIT in the 1990s, when the entire quantum community fit into one room and he knew everyone in it, to advising U.S. federal agencies — a clear-eyed look at what's real, what's hype, and what the numbers actually say.

🎙️ Guest: Dr. Yaakov Weinstein | Chief Scientist Officer for Quantum Technologies at MITRE Corporation
🎧 Host: Eva Galant | Blond & Quantum


#QuantumComputing #PostQuantumCryptography #QuantumErrorCorrection #MITRE #RSA2048 #Cybersecurity #quantumsafe #blondandquantum

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Reza Nejabati, Head of Quantum Research at Cisco, joins Eva Galant on Blond & Quantum to pull back the curtain on the part of quantum most people never hear about — not the race to build a quantum computer, but the network that has to connect them before any of it becomes useful.

Cisco built the pipes that made the internet possible. Now Reza — a former Bristol chair professor on his second leap from academia to industry — is trying to repeat that success for the quantum era. The twist: Cisco deliberately won't chase QPUs. Instead, it's going full-stack on quantum networking, building hardware, protocols, and applications because, as Reza puts it, almost nobody else is.

In this episode: 
📍 Why "building the pipes" is the smartest seat at the quantum table — and why Cisco stays modality-agnostic 
📍 The 2-million-entangled-photons-per-second chip, and why that rate is the key to beating quantum fragility 
📍 The Quantum Switch, Quantum Alert, Quantum Sync and Compiler — what they do, and why the Switch matters most 
📍 The Cisco–IBM partnership: who brings what, the hardest technical hurdle, and that early-2030s target 
📍 Straight talk on the hype, post-quantum cryptography, and which industries actually move first 
📍 The human payoff Reza is chasing: a personalized drug, simulated in weeks, delivered affordably

A grounded, jargon-free conversation on what's real, what's overhyped, and what arrives by 2030.

🎙️ Guest: Professor Reza Nejabati | Head of Quantum Research at Cisco
🎧 Host: Eva Galant | Blond & Quantum

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Most quantum podcasts talk about physics. This one talks about money.

Pouya Dianat, Chief Revenue Officer of Quantum Computing Inc., joins Eva Galant on Blond & Quantum to pull back the curtain on the business side of quantum — the part most people never hear about.

Listen to find out:
 📍 Why cryogenics makes enterprise buyers think twice
 📍 The 1.5B in cash
 📍 How QCI is de-risking quantum (beyond just computing)
 📍 What happens if quantum doesn't deliver by 2030
 📍 Photonics explained for a curious 12-year-old

No PhD required. Just honest talk about building a quantum business.

🎙️ Guest: Pouya Dianat | CRO, Quantum Computing Inc.
 🎧 Host: Eva | Blond & Quantum

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review, and share — more conversations with global quantum leaders are coming soon.

 #quantumcomputing #QCI #photonics #quantumbusiness #deeptech #blondandquantum #crypto #quantumrevenue #TFLN #publiccompany

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Dr. Bert de Jong, Director of the Quantum Systems Accelerator at Berkeley National Lab, joins Eva Galant on Blond & Quantum to pull back the curtain on the part of quantum most people never hear about — the national labs quietly driving the science before any startup ever touches it.

We treat quantum like it's coming. Dr. Bert de Jong says it's been here the whole time  every chip in your phone already runs on quantum mechanics. What's changed is that we can finally use it in new ways.

As Director of the Quantum Systems Accelerator at Berkeley National Lab, Bert leads one of the country's largest quantum efforts from inside a $1.5B, 4,200-person institution that lives somewhere between a university and a startup. In this conversation with Eva, he breaks down what that actually means — and where quantum is genuinely heading.

In this episode:
📍 What a US National Lab really is, and how Berkeley's 16+ Nobel legacy still shapes the science
📍 Why the lab deliberately backs neutral atoms, trapped ions, and superconducting qubits — and which Bert expects to arrive first 
📍 The near-term reality: industry-relevant simulations in 3–5 years, starting with chemistry, materials, and optimization 
📍 Why the story is bigger than computing — quantum sensing for GPS-free navigation, secure networking, and the race to stay quantum-safe 
📍 How Berkeley's incubator turns researchers into founders, and the moonshot keeping Bert up at night: zero-energy fresh water from the sea

A grounded, jargon-free look at what's real, what's hype, and what's three years away.

🎙️ Guest: Dr. Bert de Jong | Director, Quantum Systems Accelerator, Berkeley National Lab 🎧 Host: Eva | Blond & Quantum

Enjoying Blond & Quantum? Follow the show and share this episode — more conversations with global quantum leaders are on the way.

#quantumcomputing #berkeleylab #quantumsystemsaccelerator #neutralatoms #quantumsensing #deeptech #nationallab #quantumchemistry #blondandquantum #scientificdiscovery

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Quantum hardware exists. But making it work? That's an AI problem.

Isaiah Hull, co-founder and CTO of FirstQFM, joins Eva Galant on Blond & Quantum to talk about the missing layer in the quantum stack — foundation models built specifically to improve quantum hardware performance.

Listen to find out:
📍 Why we've been working on this since before ChatGPT
📍 The commercial quantum application coming June 2025
📍 Which modality is quietly winning (neutral atoms)
📍 What investors get wrong about quantum startups
📍 Why being "quantum proof" matters

No PhD required. Just the future of computing.

🎙️ Guest: Isaiah Hull | Co-founder & CTO, FirstQFM
 🎧 Host: Eva | Blond & Quantum

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review, and share — more conversations with global quantum leaders are coming soon.

#firstqfm #quantumai #foundationmodels #quantumcomputing #deeptech #blondandquantum #machinelearning #quantumhardware #neutralatoms #quantumsoftware

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Q-Day might have already happened. In the 1990s.

Joe Spencer, UK Director at Global Quantum Intelligence Platform, joins Eva Galant on Blond & Quantum to talk about the real-world defense applications of quantum — beyond the hype and headlines.

Listen to find out:
 📍 Why the UK is betting billions on quantum defense
 📍 The quantum technology that already matters (clocks)
 📍 Which country is quietly outperforming everyone else
 📍 What "see first, shoot first" means in the quantum era
 📍 Why Q-Day isn't a single day — and why that matters

No PhD required. Just honest intelligence.

🎙️ Guest: Joe Spencer | UK Director, GQI
 🎧 Host: Eva | Blond & Quantum

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review, and share — more conversations with global quantum leaders are coming soon.

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"Harvest now, decrypt later" isn't a theory. It's happening right now.
Marc Kaplan, CEO of VeriQloud, joins Eva Galant on Blond & Quantum to talk about the quiet cybersecurity threat hiding in plain sight — and why waiting is the riskiest move you can make.

Listen to find out:
📍 Why your encrypted data might already be at risk today
📍 What "harvest now, decrypt later" actually means (and who's doing it)
📍 The hardware that protects quantum cloud computations (QEnclave)
📍 Why trusting the cloud provider isn't enough
📍 What every executive should do in the next 12 months
No PhD required. Just a wake-up call.

🎙️ Guest: Marc Kaplan | CEO, VeriQloud
 🎧 Host: Eva | Blond & Quantum

If you enjoyed this conversation, don't forget to like, subscribe, and share — more episodes with global leaders in quantum are coming soon.

#quantumsecurity #veriqloud #cybersecurity #qenclave #quantumcomputing #blondandquantum #harvestnowdecryptlater #deeptech #quantumsafe #encryption

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