PRESS RELEASE — ColdQuanta, a global quantum ecosystem leader, today announced the appointment of Chris Wood to Vice President of Photonics Technologies and Alex Olivas as Vice President of Software Engineering and Operations. Chris and Alex join ColdQuanta’s growing leadership team guiding the company as it commercializes its innovative quantum technologies.
“ColdQuanta is at an inflection point as the company brings its technologies to market and drives the global quantum ecosystem,” said Scott Faris, ColdQuanta CEO. “Chris and Alex each bring a combination of leadership and technical expertise foundational to accelerating our leadership position. Their collective knowledge will enable us to ensure we’re a step ahead in providing customers with a product and service portfolio that meets their evolving needs.”
Chris Wood brings a deep background in atomic, molecular, optical and quantum technologies. He is an experienced technical executive with a demonstrated history of success in the LiDAR, defense, and medical device industries. Wood is skilled in all manner of Lasers, Thin Films, R&D and its transition to Production, Optical Engineering, Physics, and Spectroscopy. Prior to ColdQuanta, Wood served in various executive roles at Insight Lidar, Kapteyn-Murnane Laboratories (KLM) Inc., and Precision Photonics. Chris previously served as a board member for the Colorado Photonics Industry Association.
“ColdQuanta is recognized as an early innovator in quantum technologies and it’s exciting to see the company’s products deployed broadly across the marketplace,” said Wood. “Photonics plays an essential role in the advancement of quantum technologies and I’m eager to put my expertise in this area to work for ColdQuanta and its customers.”
Alex Olivas joins ColdQuanta as Vice President Software Engineering and Operations from the University of Maryland College Park where he served as a Research Associate and then Faculty Specialist for the last 17 years. Alex is deeply involved in the broader industry having founded the IceCube Open Source Organization, a gathering of open source projects from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, which is designed to observe the cosmos from deep within the South Pole ice. For the last seven years, Alex served in a leadership role as IceCube’s Software Coordinator. Alex received his PhD in High Energy Physics from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2004, where he worked for three years as a JILA graduate student on an experiment attempting to achieve BEC.
“Based on my work with BEC at JILA, ColdQuanta is a natural fit for the next step in my career,” said Olivas. “Software will underpin the next evolution of our industry, enabling customers to achieve maximum value from their quantum investments.”
About ColdQuanta
ColdQuanta is a global quantum technology company solving the world’s most challenging problems. The company harnesses quantum mechanics to build and integrate quantum computers, sensors, and networks. From fundamental physics to leading edge commercial products, ColdQuanta enables “quantum everywhere” through our ecosystem of devices and platforms. Founded in 2007, ColdQuanta grew from decades of research in atomic physics and work at JILA, with intellectual property licensed through the University of Colorado and University of Wisconsin. ColdQuanta’s scalable and versatile cold atom technology is used by world-class organizations around the globe and deployed by NASA on the International Space Station. ColdQuanta is based in Boulder, CO, with offices in Madison, WI and Oxford, UK. Find out how ColdQuanta is building the future at www.coldquanta.com.
If you found this article to be informative, you can explore more current quantum news here, exclusives, interviews, and podcasts.
