Black Forest Quantum Group

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 NÉEL, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Université Joseph Fourier in Grenoble, where he defended his doctorate in 2011. During his PhD at the Institut NÉEL, 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.

Mathieu was born in 1991 in Île-de-France, France. He studied at École Normale Supérieure, Paris from 2011 to 2015 and received his PhD from Université Paris-Saclay in 2021. During his doctoral work at Laboratoire de Physique des Solides (LPS), Orsay, in the NS2 group led by Marco Aprili, he was advised by Jérôme Estève. His research focused on engineered lattices of microwave resonators, exploring nonlinear interactions, energy redistribution and thermalization, and the physics of granular aluminium resonators.

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.

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.

Ameya grew up in Mumbai, India. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Mumbai and subsequently completed a Master’s degree in Nanotechnology at KU Leuven, Belgium, and Université Grenoble Alpes, France. In early 2021, she joined Ioan Pop’s group for her master’s thesis and continued her work as a PhD student. Her research focuses on understanding and coherently controlling quantum states associated with vortices in granular aluminum, with the aim of exploring their potential as superconducting qubits.

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.

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.

Danilo studied physics at Sapienza University of Rome, where he completed his Master’s degree in Particle and Astroparticle Physics. During his Master’s thesis, he joined the research group of Prof. Marco Vignati and worked on the development and optimization of a multi-MKID-array setup and readout system for the BULLKID Dark Matter experiment. In October 2025, Danilo joined the group of Prof. Wolfgang Wernsdorfer as a PhD student, under joint supervision with Prof. Ioan Pop. His PhD research focuses on the development of a magnetic-field-resilient fluxonium-based single microwave photon counter. Outside the lab, Danilo enjoys spending time in nature through hiking and climbing, as well as discovering new music and attending concerts.

Priyanshi was born in India, where she completed her Bachelor’s degree in Physics. She went on to pursue M.Sc. Physics at the Universität zu Köln. During her Master’s, she worked in Prof. Yoichi Ando’s group on topological-insulator based transmons. She joined PhD in Prof. Ioan Pop’s group in March 2025, where her research focuses on measuring charge effects and noise in fluxonium qubits and studying vortex qubit states in granular aluminum. Priyanshi particularly enjoys the hands-on aspects of research and likes spending time in the cleanroom. Outside the lab, she enjoys exploring new places and discovering the beauty of nature, different cultures, music, and food.