IonQ, the leader in quantum computing, today announced new additions to its leadership team. Dave Bacon has joined IonQ as the Vice President of Software, coming to IonQ from Google's quantum engineering team. Denise Ruffner, former Chief Business Officer of Cambridge Quantum Computing, has joined IonQ as the Vice President of Business Development.
"We are beyond thrilled to have Dave and Denise on board. Both are undeniable leaders in the quantum computing industry and will bring invaluable experience to the IonQ team as we continue to grow," said IonQ CEO & President Peter Chapman. "Our mission is to attract the best talent in the world to help us build and scale, and having Dave and Denise join us from two of the industry's biggest players further affirms that IonQ is the true leader in quantum."
Dave Bacon, who was a Senior Staff Software Engineer at Google, led the quantum software team where he helped launch Google's quantum service this year. He was a key driver of Google's quantum supremacy announcement and is one half of the Bacon-Shor Code for error correction. Dave holds a PhD in Physics from UC Berkeley and has a rich background in quantum research, serving as a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology and the Santa Fe Institute, and more recently, as a research assistant professor in quantum information science at the University of Washington. At IonQ, Dave will lead efforts to engineer scalable quantum advantages on IonQ's quantum computers.
"I told Dave I would grant him three wishes if he decided to join IonQ. That he could wish for anything in the world, except for more wishes. He asked me for a quantum computer with 100 or more logical qubits, the ability to teleport, to find true love, and to bring back Betamax," said Peter Chapman, CEO & President of IonQ. "I agreed to grant him the first three, but of course the last wish was one too many."
"I've long admired IonQ's co-founders, Chris Monroe and Junsang Kim, who are true pioneers in the field of quantum. I was blown away when I heard that Chris and Ken Brown used the Bacon-Shor Code for their logical qubit demonstration, as I've been watching their advancements since I was a graduate student," said Dave Bacon, VP, Software, IonQ (now engaged thanks to wish two). "Their demonstration with ion trap technology helped convince me that it was the right time to join IonQ."
Denise Ruffer, who was the Chief Business Officer for Cambridge Quantum Computing, has been widely recognized for her innovation, strategic planning, and sales leadership in quantum computing. She was an early employee of IBM Quantum, where she spearheaded the IBM Q Startup Program in 2018, led the worldwide ambassador program, and was responsible for sales strategy for the quantum team. She is Senior Advisor for the OneQuantum startup network, and the President of the Women in Quantum Chapter of OneQuantum, a quantum network dedicated to promoting and creating a community for the women in the quantum industry. Women in Quantum will host its third summit this December, sponsored by IonQ. "Women in Quantum is an organization that highlights the contributions that women are making in quantum computing and I am proud that IonQ agrees on the importance of this organization and is willing to support our next event. Given the tremendous innovation at IonQ, I look forward to their keynote talk" remarked Denise Ruffner, VP of Business Development.
"At CQC we worked closely with IonQ, and after seeing how impressive the newest generation of IonQ computers was I knew I had to join IonQ and become part of bringing this amazing technology to the market" said Denise Ruffner, VP, Business Development, IonQ. "I believe IonQ's technology represents the clearest path to developing commercial applications for quantum computing and I couldn't be happier to be part of the team that will continue to bring the most groundbreaking quantum technology to market."
Earlier this month IonQ announced the world's most powerful quantum computer, unveiling a next generation quantum computing system featuring 32 perfect qubits with low gate errors and an expected quantum volume greater than 4,000,000. IonQ has raised $84 million in funding to date, recently announcing new investment from Lockheed Martin, Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH (RBVC) and Cambium. Previous investors include Samsung Electronics, Mubadala Capital, GV, Amazon, and NEA. The company's two co-founders were also recently named to the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee (NQIAC).
About IonQ
IonQ is the leader in quantum computing. By making our quantum hardware accessible through the cloud, we're empowering millions of organizations and developers to build new applications to solve the world's most complex problems in business, and across society. IonQ's unique approach to quantum computing is to start with nature: using individual atoms as the heart of our quantum processing units. We levitate them in space with electric potentials applied to semiconductor-defined electrodes on a chip, and then use lasers to do everything from initial preparation to final readout and the quantum gate operations in between. The unique IonQ architecture of random access processing of qubits in a fully-connected and modular architecture will allow unlimited scaling. The IonQ approach requires atomic physics, precision optical and mechanical engineering, and fine-grained firmware control over a variety of components. Leveraging this approach, IonQ provides both a viable technological roadmap to scale and the flexibility necessary to explore a wide range of application spaces in the near term. IonQ was founded in 2015 by Jungsang Kim and Christopher Monroe and their systems are based on foundational research at The University of Maryland and Duke University.
