QNetworks Workshop 2026
Connecting global leaders to shape the future of a quantum networked world
About
QNetworks is a two-day international workshop organised by the Integrated Quantum Networks (IQN) Hub, the UK’s flagship national programme for quantum networks research. QNetworks invites thought leaders from similar flagship R&D initiatives across the world, and brings together key governmental and industry voices to discuss the challenges, solutions, and partnerships required to deliver the next generation of quantum networks.
This year’s event will take place in person at Bristol on 12-13 May, 2026, and will be free to attend thanks to support from the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC).
Sessions will cover recent developments on quantum memories; integrated photonics for quantum networking, enabling technologies and field trials; the role of entanglement; post-quantum cryptography; quantum communications via satellite; networked quantum systems for distributed sensing and computing; and more.
There will be an opportunity for Early Career Researchers/PhD students to present research posters at the event. If this option is of interest, there is the option to submit a 150-word abstract during the registration process. The deadline for submissions is Friday 17th April.
More speaker announcements will follow soon!
Venue
Bristol Aquarium, Anchor Rd, Bristol BS1 5TT
QNetworks 2026 will be hosted at the Bristol Megascreen, located within the Bristol Aquarium. This former IMAX cinema is ideally located in central Bristol and will provide an outstanding conference venue with its tiered 300 seater auditorium, huge 19x15m screen and professional Dolby audio.
Outline Agenda
Tuesday 12th
Wednesday 13th
Speakers
Below is a list of confirmed speakers with more to follow soon.
Dr Davide Bacco
Associate Professor
University of Florence
Davide Bacco is an Associate Professor at the University of Florence and co-founder of QTI s.r.l., Italy’s first company commercializing quantum communication systems. Trained in telecommunications engineering at the University of Padova, his research focuses on quantum communications, quantum cryptography, and integrated photonics, bridging academic research with real-world quantum technology innovation.
Dr Mihir Bhaskar
Senior Vice President, Global R&D
IonQ
Dr Mihir Bhaskar has over a decade of experience in quantum technologies. In 2020, he led the first ever demonstration of quantum networking rate enhancements using diamond color-center quantum memory technology he pioneered during his PhD at Harvard. Before joining IonQ, where he currently serves as Senior Vice President of Global R&D, he was CEO and Co-Founder at Lightsynq Technologies, a startup commercializing memory-enhanced quantum interconnects, acquired by IonQ in 2025. Prior to Lightsynq, he launched and served as research lead at the Amazon Web Services Center for Quantum Networking from 2021-2024.
Dr Rutvij Bhavsar
Research Associate
King’s College London
Rutvij Bhavsar is a Research Associate in the Department of Mathematics at King’s College London, working primarily on Quantum Information Theory and Quantum Cryptography. His research focuses on translating foundational aspects of quantum theory into practical applications, in particular developing highly secure cryptographic protocols based on Bell non-locality.
Dr Paul Burdekin
Senior Research Fellow
University of Oxford
Paul’s research centres on atom–light interactions and the development of warm vapour quantum memories for scalable quantum networks. At Oxford, he works with Professor Ian Walmsley at the Oxford Quantum Institute to develop broadband, telecom-compatible memory platforms.
Dr Chloe Clear
Senior Quantum Engineer
Photonic Inc.
Dr Clear is a Senior Quantum Engineer at Photonic Inc specializing in silicon-based quantum computing, with a background in the theory of solid-state quantum emitters. Her work focuses on modelling the characteristics of spin-photon qubit devices to enable the realization of high-fidelity qubit platforms and to advance the development of scalable, fault-tolerant quantum technologies.
Dr Dorian Gangloff
Royal Society University Research Fellow and Associate Professor of Quantum Technology
University of Cambridge
Dr Dorian Gangloff’s expertise lies in solid-state spin-photon interfaces, particularly semiconductor quantum dots and colour centres, for quantum networks. Within the IQN Hub, he contributes leadership in quantum memories, qubit control, and spin-photon entanglement.
Dr Jeffrey Hunt
Senior Technical Fellow
The Boeing Company
Dr Jeffrey H. Hunt is a Senior Technical Fellow of The Boeing Company. Dr Hunt has published numerous technical papers, including 168 US patents, a number in the quantum technologies arena. Dr Hunt is a fellow of the American Physical Society and Optica. As an Industrial Physicist, Dr Hunt’s interests extend from the basic quantum sciences into the applications space. He will be sharing his knowledge in quantum arena, particularly in the application of those technologies to the aerospace sector.
Dr Siddarth Joshi
Senior Lecturer in Optical Communications
University of Bristol
Professor Adrian Kent
Professor of Quantum Physics
University of Cambridge
Adrian Kent is Professor of Quantum Physics at DAMTP, University of Cambridge and a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at Perimeter Institute. His contributions to quantum cryptography include the first relativistic protocols for bit commitment and new practical schemes for secure quantum money token, as well as the co-invention of quantum position verification, quantum randomness expansion, and quantum key distribution with security based on no-signalling. He is UK PI of the UK-Canada Quantum Networks in Theory and Practice collaboration.
Dr Ayesha Khalid
Senior Lecturer
Queen’s University Belfast
Dr. Ayesha Khalid is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). She leads the research in Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), with focus on the design, optimization, and implementation of quantum-secure cryptography hardware, particularly for embedded devices. She is a senior member of IEEE and a co-I in the EPSRC IQN hub project.
Sir Peter Knight
National Quantum Technologies Programme Strategic Advisory Board Chair
Innovate UK
Professor Prem Kumar
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Northwestern University
Prem Kumar is Professor of Information Technology in the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University. His research focuses on quantum photonic devices and their applications in quantum information networks. He is a Fellow of Optica (formerly OSA), APS, IEEE, IoP (U.K.), AAAS, and SPIE. During 2013-2017 he was at DARPA, where he created and managed a portfolio of programs in basic and applied sciences. From 2020 to 2025, he served as Editor-in-Chief of Optica, the flagship journal of the Optica Publishing Group. Currently, he co-chairs the US National Academies Committee on Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics.
Dr Sarah McCarthy
Deputy Lead, Quantum Readiness Program
Citi
Sarah McCarthy, a leading expert in quantum-safe cryptography, champions Citi’s Quantum Readiness Program. She obtained a PhD from Queen’s University Belfast, is an affiliate of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo and sits on the steering committee of Europol’s Quantum Safe Financial Forum. Her work, spanning from developing quantum-safe network solutions to co-ordinating stakeholders towards a secure migration, focuses on securing financial systems against quantum threats.
Dr Thomas Nieddu
Senior Business Developer
Welinq
Dr Natalie Pearson
Quantum Technology Lead
Craft Prospect
At Craft Prospect Natalie leads the Quantum Technology team which works to deploy quantum systems on small satellites. They are primarily focused on quantum communication and have delivered QKD sources and receivers for satellite based QKD. Beyond quantum comms they are further interested in quantum sensing and distributed entanglement applications.
Professor Mohsen Razavi
Professor of Quantum Communications
University of Leeds
Mohsen Razavi is a leading expert in quantum communications at the University of Leeds. His research spans quantum key distribution and its security, quantum networks, and quantum repeaters. He has coordinated major initiatives such as the European QCALL network. He is the author of an introductory book on quantum communications networks.
Dr Matt Shaw
Senior Research Scientist
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Matt Shaw is a Senior Research Scientist and the supervisor of the Superconductive Materials and Devices group at JPL, which specializes in the development of a variety of superconducting detector technologies in support of NASA science goals. Since 2012, he has been leading the development of superconducting nanowire single photon detectors at JPL and developing technology for deep-space optical communication. He also holds a visiting research affiliation at Caltech.
Dr Andrew Shields
Vice President
Toshiba Europe Ltd.
Andrew Shields is Vice President of Toshiba Europe and leads their Quantum Technology Business Division, with a mission to commercialization of quantum networking products. His research interests include quantum communications and semiconductor sources of entanglement, fields in which he has 500+ publications, 30,000+ citations (H-index 88), and over 130 patents. Shields is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and has been awarded the Institute of Physics Mott Medal and Prize (2013) and Katharine Burr Blodgett Medal and Prize (2022).
Dr Rob Thew
Senior Researcher
University of Geneva
Rob Thew is a senior researcher and group leader in the Quantum Technologies group at the University of Geneva. He is an expert in quantum communication, spanning fundamental to applied topics, and from technology development to systems integration. He was recently part of the teams that established the Geneva Quantum Centre and launched the Geneva Quantum network – a quantum research infrastructure.
Professor Don Towsley
Director of the Quantum Information Systems Institute
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Don Towsley’s research spans a wide range of activities, from quantum and classical networking and secure communications to distributed learning and inference. He pioneered the area of network tomography and the use of fluid models for the analysis and control of large networks. More recently, he pioneered the theoretical study of covert communications and is one of the leading researchers in the area of quantum networking, where he and his collaborators have developed new routing algorithms and quantum switch designs. For his work in networking, Don has received many awards including the 2007 IEEE Koji Kobayashi Award and several lifetime achievement awards.
Dr Natalia Herrera Valencia
Research Associate
Heriot-Watt University / Intertangle
Dr Natalia Herrera Valencia is a quantum photonics researcher at the Beyond Binary Quantum Information Laboratory in Heriot-Watt University, establishing novel complex-media platforms to harness high-dimensional entanglement. She leads translational and commercial activities through the pre-spinout project Intertangle, developing deployable photonic systems to support scalable, robust and dynamic entanglement networks.
Dr Ben Walker-Pearl
Architect for Qubit-Photon Interfaces
Nu Quantum
Ben is the Architect for Qubit-Photon Interfaces at Nu Quantum, leading the development of the company’s technical roadmap in this area. For the last two and a half years, he has been part of the technical leadership, development, and delivery of optical microcavities to enable high-rate, high-fidelity photon-mediated entanglement across a network of quantum processors. The initial focus has spanned trapped ion and neutral atom qubits, with ambition to also support solid-state qubits in the future. Previously, Ben worked in technical consultancy for a wide variety of industries and disciplines at The Technology Partnership, and completed a PhD at Imperial College London, specialising in fabricating and utilising optical microcavities for photon Bose-Einstein Condensates.
Dr Catherine White
Research Technical Manager
BT
Cathy White has worked in optical and quantum technologies at BT since 2016, contributing to the design and operation of several network pilots, including the BT–Toshiba Quantum Secure Metro Network. She is an active contributor to standards groups and industry consortia, including the BT‑led UK QAssure project, which applies modern assurance methods to build confidence in the resilience and security of telecommunications systems, with a particular focus on QKD.
Dr Zhiliang Yuan
Chief Scientist
Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences (BAQIS)
Zhiliang Yuan is Chief Scientist at BAQIS and leads the Quantum Photonics Group. His research focuses on quantum communications, including long-distance quantum key distribution, and on quantum light sources based on semiconductor quantum dots. He has made notable contributions to long-distance quantum key distribution, semiconductor quantum light sources, and practical architectures for quantum communication networks.
Accommodation
Bristol is a vibrant city offering diverse options for accommodation. Below is a selection of hotels located near the venue which accommodate a range of budgets:
Programme Committee
Sima Bahrani
University of Bristol
Gerald Buller
Heriot-Watt University
Alex Clark
University of Bristol
Marcus Clark
University of Bristol
Roger Colbeck
King College London
Alessandro Fedrizzi
Heriot-Watt University
Daniel Oi
University of Strathclyde
Ciara Rafferty
Queen’s University Belfast
Jason Smith
University of Oxford
Rui Wang
University of Bristol
Adrian Wonfor
University of Cambridge
Mark Yang
University of Bristol
EDI Statement
Principles of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) are firmly embedded across all operational and governance aspects of the IQN Hub programme of work, and extend to all engagement activities, including events such as the QNetworks 2026 workshop. We are committed to ensuring that our conference is inclusive and accessible to all. Registration is free and travel bursaries are available for those without access to other sources of funding (UK travel only). Assistive technologies will be in place to ensure that all participants can take part fully. A quiet space will be available for attendees who need a calm area to take a break and refocus.
In selecting speakers, we seek to represent a diverse range of backgrounds, career stages, disciplines, and perspectives.