Quantum Brilliance Taps IBM Vet to Lead European Efforts

(FierceElectronics) a surge of upstart firms in Europe and a wealth of quantum computing knowledge at universities and research institutions there should not be overlooked.
At least one veteran of the U.S. tech giant landscape–former IBM executive Mark Mattingley-Scott–has found a lot to like in one of those European upstarts–Germany’s Quantum Brilliance. The company announced this week that Mattingley-Scott has joined Quantum Brilliance as Managing Director of Europe, a job in which he will lead business development and strategic partnerships.
Quantum Brilliance was spun out of the Australian National University and has been described as an Australian-German venture, although it recently made Stuttgart, Germany its official headquarters (Much of its technology also was developed at the Centre for Applied Quantum Technology at Stuttgart University.) The company is aiming to use synthetic diamond-based accelerators to help create quantum computing hardware that runs at room temperature, so that it doesn’t require large cooling units as many quantum computers do today. That could lead to quantum computing hardware in much smaller form factors.
The hiring of Mattingley-Scott is the second big piece of news that has come out of Quantum Brilliance in recent weeks, the other being last month’s announcement of $9.7 million in new funding for the firm.
While the amount of money collectively being invested in U.S. based quantum computing start-ups likely is larger than that being put into European start-ups, Europe may have the edge in engineering talent, an area that will become extremely important over the next few years.