 Sandbox AQ Vice President of Product |
Nadia Carlsten is Vice President of Product at Sandbox AQ, where she is responsible for managing product development across the company’s product areas, including quantum security, quantum sensing, and simulation & optimization. She has extensive experience turning emerging technologies into products. Previously she was Head of Product at the AWS Center for Quantum Computing where she helped define the strategy for quantum hardware and helped launch Amazon Braket, AWS’s quantum computing service. Dr. Carlsten has also led commercialization activities at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and successfully brought new technologies to market in the areas of cybersecurity and machine learning. She has a PhD in engineering from UC Berkeley, a BS in chemistry, and BA in physics from the University of Virginia. |
 Thom H. Dunning, Jr. |
Thom Dunning is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Research Professor at the University of Washington. Prior to that, he worked in the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy as Assistant Director for Scientific Simulation, where he was responsible for developing a new scientific computing program. He held many positions at PNNL, becoming director of the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory in 1994 and the first Battelle Fellow in 1997, and worked at three other national laboratories. Dr. Dunning was also a professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and University of Tennessee. He holds a PhD in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology and a BS degree in chemistry from the Missouri University of Science and Technology. |
 Laura Gagliardi |
Laura Gagliardi is Richard and Kathy Leventhal Professor of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago and the James Franck Institute. At the University of Chicago, she is the Director of the Chicago Center for Theoretical Chemistry and the Director of the Catalyst Design for Decarbonization Center. Dr. Gagliardi also leads the Gagliardi Group, which is composed of scientists and engineers who develop and employ advanced quantum and classical simulations as well as data science to discover and understand the next generation of chemical systems and materials. Previously, she was the McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair and Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota. She obtained a PhD, JD, and a master’s in chemistry from the University of Bologna. |
 Teresa Head-Gordon |
Teresa Head-Gordon is Chancellor's Professor of Chemistry, Bioengineering, and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior faculty scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She is Director of CalSolv at Berkeley, co-Director of the NSF Molecular Sciences and Software Institute, and Faculty Director of the Professional Masters in Molecular Sciences and Software Engineering. Her laboratory encompasses the development of general computational models and methodologies applied to broad translational efforts, including molecular liquids, macromolecular assemblies, homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, natural and synthetic enzymes, and machine learning. She holds a PhD in chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University and was a postdoctoral member of technical staff at AT&T Bell Labs. |
 Jeremy Smith |
Jeremy Smith became the first Governor's Chair and is Professor of Biochemistry & Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Tennessee (UT). He is Director of the UT-Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Center for Molecular Biophysics at ORNL. Dr. Smith was a molecular simulation group leader with France’s Atomic Energy Commission at Saclay. He became the first chaired professor of computational biology when appointed to the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing of the University of Heidelberg, where he is an honorary professor today. Dr. Smith’s research interests include the high-performance computer simulation of biological macromolecules, supercomputing, bioenergy, environmental biogeochemistry, drug and vaccine design, and biological neutron scattering. He obtained his PhD in biophysics from the University of London and a degree in biophysics from the University of Leeds, England. |
 Matthias Troyer |
Matthias Troyer is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, Vice President at Microsoft Quantum, and a recipient of the Rahman Prize for Computational Physics of the American Physical Society and the Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics. He was a professor of computational physics at ETH Zurich in Switzerland until joining Microsoft’s quantum computing program. Dr. Troyer works on a variety of topics in quantum computing, from the simulation of materials and quantum devices to quantum software, algorithms, and applications of future quantum computers. His broader research interests span from high-performance computing and quantum computing to the simulations of quantum devices and island ecosystems. He received his PhD and master’s in physics from ETH Zurich in Switzerland and a degree in physics from Johannes Kepler Universität Linz, Austria. |
 Alex Wade |
Alex Wade is Vice President, Data Products at Digital Science in London. Prior to joining Digital Science, he was Director of Strategic Partnerships at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Seattle, directed artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) research at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and was Director of Scholarly Communications at Microsoft Research. Mr. Wade’s career has focused on the intersection of AI/ML research, information discovery, open science, and scholarly communication. He received a master’s in library and information science at the University of Washington and a degree in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley. |