Ioan was born in 1983 in Transylvania, Romania, studied physics at the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca from 2002 to 2006, and graduated with a bachelor thesis on the magnetism of MnSi studied via muon spin rotation. He continued his studies in France, with a masters and a PhD in physics at the Institut N?EL, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Universite Joseph Fourier in Grenoble, where he defended his doctorate in 2011. During his PhD at the Institut NEEL, Ioan was advised by Wiebke Guichard and Bernard Pannetier, in close collaboration with the group of Olivier Buisson. He worked on the measurement and modeling of quantum fluctuations in Josephson junction networks. Between 2011 and 2015 Ioan worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Yale University, USA, in the group of Michel Devoret, where he discovered the beauty and potential of microwave electronics and circuit quantum electrodynamics. In 2015 he returned to Europe to establish the Black Forest Quantum research group at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, where he develops superconducting hardware for quantum information processing and detectors. Since 2023 Ioan became a joint professor at KIT and Stuttgart University, following the so-called Jülicher model. He has received several honors, including a fellowship of the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research, the 2012 Thesis Prize of the French Fondation Nanosciences, and the Sofja Kovalevskaja startup award from the Humboldt Foundation.

Thomas Reisinger was born in Munich, Germany, and grew up in southern Austria. At the age of 16 he was awarded a scholarship to attend the Lester B. Pearson College in Canada. Upon completing the International Baccalaureate there, he moved on to study Computer Science (B.Eng.) at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and then Physics (Diplomstudium) at the Technical University of Graz, Austria. After graduating in 2007 he joined the group of Prof. Bodil Holst at the University of Bergen for a Ph.D. in Nanophysics, that included an extended stay at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT, in the group of Prof. Henry I. Smith. After receiving his PhD in 2011, and a short Post-Doc time in Bergen, he joined the research group of Prof. Horst Hahn at the Karslruhe Institute of Technology, to pursue his research interests in metallic nanoparticles and matter-wave interference experiments. The latter topic involved a close collaboration with Prof. Herbert Gleiter. In 2021 he joined the group of Ioan Pop at the newly founded Institute of Quantum Materials and Technologies at the KIT as senior scientist. His present research focuses on mitigating materials related losses in superconducting circuits for quantum information processing.

Denis Benatre is a PhD Student in the Black Forest Quantum group since October 2022. Born in Paris, he studied physics in ENS de Lyon, France, and first joined the group during his master's degree in 2021 and worked on inductively shunted transmons and non-linear resonators, supervised by Patrick Winkel. He also spent several months in the Benjamin Huard and Audrey Bienfait's Quantum Circuit Group in Lyon, working on the reset of fluxonium qubits with Alexis Jouan. His project now involves gradiometric fluxoniums and fluxon-based qubits, in collaboration with Mathieu Fechant. Denis enjoys listening to music, while working as well as outside of work, going to concerts and playing the trumpet.

Dennis grew up in a small village in the Black Forest not far from Karlsruhe. He studied physics at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology from 2013 to 2018. In his bachelor thesis in the group of Prof. Wulf Wulfhekel he developed an acoustic sensor for detecting impurities in Helium gas to avoid the disruption of Helium liquefaction for low-temperature experiments. During his master studies, he attended Ioan Pop?s lecture on superconducting qubits, who started his research group in Karlsruhe at the time. Excited by the research field and curious to learn more about superconducting circuits, Dennis graduated his masters with a thesis on quantum jumps of a transmon qubit under shared supervision by Prof. Wolfgang Wernsdorfer and Ioan Pop. In his PhD, he continues the close collaboration between the groups and focuses on hybrid applications involving granular aluminum circuits in strong magnetic field.

Immanuel Speitelsbach graduated with B.Sc. at University Stuttgart about terahertz faraday rotation in 3D topological insulators. He is now a master student in the group of Ioan Pop at IQMT KIT. Currently he is working on his master thesis about amplification devices for superconducting quantum circuits.

Martin was born in Bielefeld, Germany and studied physics at the Georg-August-University in Göttingen. For his bachelor thesis he joined the group of Jürgen Enderlein for the development of a super-resolution fluorescence microscope. Being interested in quantum optics, he moved to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology for his master's degree. Since 2017, he is working in the group of Ioan Pop, focusing on high-impedance quantum circuits with granular aluminum.

Mathieu was born in 1991 in Ile-De-France, France, and studied at Ecole Normale Sup?rieure in Paris from 2011 to 2015. He received his PhD in Orsay in 2021. While at LPS,Orsay, in the NS2 group led by Marco Aprili, he was advised by Jerome Est?ve. During this PhD, he worked on lattices of resonators, the non-linear interactions and thermalization in them, as well as granular aluminium resonator properties. Currently in his first year as a Post-doc at KIT, he works on gradiometric fluxonium designs, noise in cryogenic setups and future possible improvements of Qubit designs.

Nicolas Gosling was born in Quito, Ecuador. He grew up in Munich Germany, where he also did his undergrad and masters studies at the Ludwigs Maximilians Universität. For his master thesis he then moved to Karlsruhe to join Ioan Pop?s group. Now he continues as a PhD student focusing on superconducting quantum devices. Born in south America to a half German, half Ecuadorian mother and a half American, half English father Nico is very international speaking 3 languages natively. Outside of work he is outgoing and likes to spent time with friends and family. He enjoys sports and is always interested in trying something new.

Nicolas was born in 1995 in Quito, Ecuador. He studied Mathematics and Physics at Universidad San Francisco de Quito. During his Physics Bachelor thesis, he worked in Centro Atomico de Bariloche, Argentina on the magnetotransport properties of TMDs at low temperatures. For his Master thesis he joined Prof. Yoichi Ando?s lab in Cologne, where he studied the properties of Josephson Junctions on topological insulator nanowires. Currently he is a PhD student in the group of Ioan Pop where he works on the design and fabrication of quantum-limited parametric amplifiers compatible with both pure superconducting circuits and hybrid superconducting-semiconducting systems. In his free time, he likes to read books, watch football games (specially Inter Milan and Emelec games) and enjoy the taste of a good beer (any kind).

Patrick studied Physics in Heidelberg and worked for his Bachelor's thesis in the group of PD Dr. Robert Moshammer, investigating a new detector for the group?s reaction microscope used to study elementary atomic and molecular reactions that happen within a few femtoseconds or even faster. With a growing interest in low-temperature physics, Patrick started his Master?s thesis in the group of Prof. Sebastian Kempf, working on microwave SQUID multiplexers that are needed to simultaneously read out the multitude of detectors in the ?Electron Capture in 163Ho? (ECHo) experiment. Currently, Patrick is a 3rd year Ph.D. student and is mainly investigating circuit designs that aim to reduce quasiparticle losses, one of the main reasons for decoherence (see project description: From strong to ultra?strong superconducting qubit coupling). Furthermore, he enjoys the close collaboration with the young KIT start-up company Qinu GmbH, brought to life by Prof. Wolfgang Wernsdorfer, involving especially the development and production of compact tabletop dilution refrigerators that have shown to be a very valuable resource for quantum technology. In his free time, Patrick likes to learn foreign languages and enjoys playing badminton. He is also a big fan of visiting amusement parks all over the world.

Ritika grew up in Rajasthan, India. She completed her integrated Masters in Physics from Center for Excellence in Basic Science, Mumbai. She joined the group of Ioan Pop as a PhD student in October 2020. Her work focuses on investigating loss mechanisms in Superconducting circuits based on Tantalum, a material which recently enabled record-breaking Transmon qubit lifetimes. Her work involves material characterization of Tantalum films and fabrication and microwave characterization of Tantalum resonators. In her free time, she enjoys listening to music, travelling and occasionally painting.

Simon Geisert is a PhD student in the group of Ioan Pop at the Institute for Quantum Materials at KIT, where he also studied physics and graduated his Masters in 2021. His scientific interests revolve around superconductivity and the physics of quantum information as well as the technical challenges that come along with the realisation of superconducting circuits. His work therefore has a strong emphasis on finding novel architectures for scalable circuit designs that preserve coherence and enable versatile controllability of individual circuit parts such as tunable qubit-qubit coupling, which is paramount to building a coherent quantum annealing device.

Simon studied physics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology from 2015 to 2021. In his Bachelor thesis in the groups of Prof. Wolfgang Wernsdorfer and Dr. Ioan Pop, he got in touch with superconducting quantum circuits for the first time, developing a superconducting microwave magnetometer for absolute flux detection which effectively constitutes two flux tunable Transmon qubits in series. Fascinated by the direct interaction with quantum states and their manipulation, he focused his Master studies in lectures on superconductivity, solid state physics, nanotechnology and quantum technologies. Returning to the groups of Prof. Wolfgang Wernsdorfer and Dr. Ioan Pop in 2020, he graduated with a thesis on a novel type of fluxonium qubit made of a single layer of granular aluminum. He continued his work in both research groups in a PhD under shared supervision, investigating hybrid applications of superconducting quantum circuits in strong magnetic fields.

Ameya grew up in Mumbai, India. She received her Bachelors in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from Mumbai University and followed that with a Masters in Nanotechnology from KU Leuven, Belgium, and Universit? Grenoble Alpes, France jointly. She joined Ioan Pop?s group for her Masters Thesis in early 2021 and then continued as a PhD student thereafter. Her work focuses on understanding how granular aluminum deposited at low temperatures affect its electrodynamics.

Philipp studied Physics in Karlsruhe. He did his Bachelor’s thesis in the group of Prof. Schimmel, developing an experimental setup to test the long-term air retention of microstructured surfaces. After his interest in the field of Quantum information was sparked, he did his Master’s Thesis in the group of Prof. Ustinov, where he studied the interaction of superconducting circuit elements with electromagnetic waves in the millimeter range. He joined the group of Ioan Pop in October 2023 for a PhD, where he now designs and fabricates Transmon qubits with the goal of improving the readout fidelity. In his free time he enjoys listening to podcasts on a wide variety of subjects and learning new board games.

Sören studied Physics at the University of Heidelberg. For his Bachelor's thesis in Prof. Klingeler's group, he did research on lithium-ion batteries. For his Master's thesis in Prof. Kempf's group, he investigated the use of different types of superconducting resonators in microwave SQUID multiplexers. Soeren started his PhD at KIT on the 1st of October 2021. His goal is to design a modular quantum processor. In his free time, Soeren likes to play football, since he was a professional goalkeeper for over a year. He also loves hiking and to go on long cycling trips all over Europe. Furthermore he enjoys reading/watching science fiction books/series.

Mitchell studied a Bachelor of Advance Science (Honours) at the University of Queensland majoring in physics. He wrote his Honours thesis within the SQDLab Group at UQ under the supervision of Assoc. Professor Arkady Fedorov. He started his PhD in 2023 and his project is to develop a Traveling Wave Parametric Amplifier from granular aluminium as a part of the TruePA collaboration.
For fun, Mitchell likes to cook, read and play beach volleyball.

Mahya, born and raised in Tehran, Iran, completed her Master's degree in condensed matter physics at University of Tehran. In September 2020, she joined the Black Forest Quantum group to pursue her Ph.D., focusing on utilizing granular aluminum as a high-kinetic-inductance material in the context of high-impedance resonators.
With a passion for academics and personal growth, Mahya enjoys playing Volleyball and Badminton.