Prof. Fernando Brandao

Fernando Brandão is the head of quantum algorithms at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the Bren Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech. He is a world-wide authority in quantum information and computation theory; and his research extends across quantum physics, information theory, and computer science. Prof. Brandão's science and technology journey includes notable stints at Google's Quantum AI Lab, Microsoft, University College London, ETH, and UFMG, all underpinned by a PhD from Imperial College London and postdoctoral fellowships at Imperial College London and UFMG. In 2009, he received the IoP Quantum Electronics and Photonics PhD Thesis Prize. In 2020, in turn, he was awarded the Rolf Landauer and Charles H. Bennett Award in Quantum Computing “for outstanding achievements in entanglement theory and in the intersection of quantum computation, quantum thermodynamics, and quantum many-body physics”. Besides that, he has also made major contributions to quantum cryptography, quantum Hamiltonian complexity, and quantum supremacy demonstrations.