Quantum, explained in pictures.

A pioneer of diagrammatic reasoning in quantum theory. Bob Coecke spent twenty years at the University of Oxford, where he co-founded and led the Quantum Group, before moving to industry as Chief Scientist at Quantinuum. He continues to supervise students at Oxford and elsewhere, and still teaches at Oxford’s Mathematical Institute.

A developmental cognitive scientist with a longstanding interest in multidisciplinary approaches to education. Her research focuses on the cognitive processes behind human educability and reasoning, educational interventions and brain stimulation, and on how quantum science can change the way complex ideas are taught.

Her research formalises where quantum computer architectures, quantum error correction, quantum graphical calculi and models of quantum computation meet. Her wider interests include quantum algorithms for physics and chemistry, quantum circuit synthesis and complexity, and quantum education.

John Selby works on the foundations of physics: how do we know that nature is non-classical, is there a deeper theory of nature than quantum theory, and what is the best way to understand quantum theory? He does not know the answers yet, but is convinced that diagrammatic methods and process-based thinking will be part of them.

A physicist working on quantum foundations and quantum computing, with an emphasis on compositional, process-based perspectives. He has taught Quantum in Pictures in both the UK and Pakistan, and was part of the team that took the approach to the 2023 Oxford study with state-school students.

A senior researcher bridging the worlds of mathematics and computer science. His current research focuses on the development of graphical languages for applications in quantum computing and machine learning, seeking to simplify complex computational structures through visual and mathematical frameworks.

Aleks Kissinger works on quantum software: quantum compilation, fault-tolerant quantum computing, and the classical simulation and verification of quantum computations. Much of his work draws on diagrammatic and graph-theoretic ways of reasoning about quantum systems. With Bob Coecke he wrote Picturing Quantum Processes, a fully diagrammatic treatment of quantum theory.

John van de Wetering studies how diagrams can improve the way we reason about quantum computation: he uses the ZX-calculus for quantum circuit optimisation, classical simulation and verification. His second line of research is in quantum foundations, where he works with algebraic and compositional methods. He directs the University of Amsterdam’s master’s programme in Quantum Computer Science.

Matty Hoban works on quantum information and the foundations of quantum computing, and on where the two meet, especially when quantum non-locality is involved. He is interested in how quantum information differs from its non-quantum counterpart, and in how that difference can be used in cryptography and in verifying quantum devices. Before joining Oxford he was a senior research scientist in quantum cryptography at Quantinuum.

Dusko Pavlovic’s research has moved from pure mathematics, through theoretical computer science and software engineering, to network computation and security, with excursions into quantum computation and game theory. Born in Sarajevo, he studied mathematics in Utrecht and worked at McGill before turning to computer science at Imperial College London. In 1999 he left academia for software research in Palo Alto, and later returned to it as a professor at Royal Holloway, Twente and Hawaii.

Emmanuel Pothos applies quantum theory to cognitive modelling, above all to how people make decisions. He has been part of the quantum cognition research community from its early days and contributed some of its first models, on the disjunction effect and the conjunction fallacy. He has also worked on categorisation, artificial grammar learning and attentional biases.