Ian Walmsley

Prof. Ian Walmsley FRS is chairman of the ORCA Board and Provost of Imperial College, London. He was previously Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation, and Hooke Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Oxford, and is an Honorary Fellow at St Hugh's College, Oxford. He was director of the NQIT (Networked Quantum Information Technologies) hub - part of the UK National Quantum Technology Programme - which was set up to deliver core hardware and software technology for quantum simulation and quantum computing. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, The Optical Society, the Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society, recognised for his contributions to quantum optics and ultrafast optics, including his development of the spectral phase interferometry for direct electric-field reconstruction (SPIDER) technique, as well as technologies central to quantum information processing. He is a co-inventor of 10 patents, most of which are licensed. Prof. Walmsley is a leading figure in quantum optics, memories detection, and waveguide circuits for quantum computing.