This Annual DQC Conference is co-organised by the Distributed Quantum Computing & Applications (DQC) project and the School of Convergence Science (SoCS), aiming to showcase the project's latest research outcomes and facilitate exchanges with the broader community in the technical areas. This two-day event will be held on 14 and 15 May 2026 at Imperial College. The conference will feature talks from industrial and academic partners, providing a collaborative forum to exchange ideas on the project's core themes.
4th Annual Distributed Quantum Computing (DQC) Conference
14 and 15 May 2026
170 Queen’s Gate
Imperial College London
Tentative Conference Schedule
** Any conference updates will be posted on this page **
Day 1 (14 May 2026)
| 09:00 - 09:45 | Tea/Coffee Reception |
| 09:45 | Welcoming Remarks Mary Ryan (Vice Provost – Research & Enterprise, Imperial College) Kin Leung (DQC PI and SoCS co-Director, Imperial College) |
| 10:00 - 10:35 | Jonathan Legh-Smith (Executive Director, UKQuantum) Keynote: UK's Quantum Ecosystem |
| 10:35 - 10:50 | John Fitzgerald (EPSRC) UKRI Support of the Quantum Research Landscape |
| 10:50 - 11:20 | Tea/Coffee Break |
| 11:20 - 12:05 | Panel 1: "Future Challenges of Distributed Quantum Computing" Moderator: Roberto Bondesan (DQC, Imperial College) Panellists: Daniel Mills (Quantinuum), Zohim Chandani (NVIDIA), Alexei Kondratyev (Imperial), Sam Winter (BT) |
| Session 1.1 - Chair: Kin Leung (DQC PI & SoCS co-Director, Imperial College) | |
| 12:05 - 12:30 | Lajos Hanzo (University of Southampton) Recent Directions in Quantum Communications |
| 12:30 - 12:55 | Dougal Main (University of Oxford/Oxford Ionics) Distributed Quantum Computing across a Trapped-Ion Quantum Network |
| 12:55 - 14:00 | Onsite Lunch |
| Session 1.2 - Chair: Jack Jacquier (DQC & Maths, Imperial College) | |
| 14:00 - 14:25 | Luca Magri (Imperial College) 'Solving' Nonlinear Differential Equations with Quantum Reservoir Computing and Fokker-Plank Embedding |
| 14:25 - 14:50 | Peter Brearley (University of Manchester) Non-unitary Quantum Computing via Exponentially Convergent Linear Combinations of Unitaries |
| 14:50 - 15:15 | Marcel Mordarski (DQC, Imperial College) Noisy Universal Approximation Theorem: Predicting Black-Scholes Option Prices with Quantum Neural Networks |
| 15:15 - 15:45 | Tea/Coffee Break |
| 15:45 - 16:30 | Panel 2: "Applications of Quantum Computing to Engineering" Moderator: Sylvain Laizet (DQC, Imperial College) Panellists: Luca Magri (Imperial College), Peter Brearley (University of Manchester), Omer Rathore (Durham University), Felix Tennie (City St George University of London) |
| Session 1.3 - Chair: Jonathan Eastwood (SoCS co-Director & Physics, Imperial College) | |
| 16:30 - 16:55 | Joe Cotter (Imperial College) Quantum Sensing for Inertial Navigation |
| 16:55 - 17:20 | Davide Venturelli (USRA/NASA Quantum AI Lab, USA) Noise-Robust Quantum Heuristic Algorithm Hardware-Software Co-Design |
| 18:00 - 21:00 |
Dinner @ 170 Queen's Gate |
Day 2 (15 May 2026)
| 09:30 - 10:00 | Tea/Coffee Reception |
| 10:00 - 10:45 | Stefano Pirandola (University of York, nodeQ) Keynote: Building the Quantum Internet |
| 10:45 - 11:10 | Louis Chen (DQC, Imperial College) A Hybrid Quantum-Classical Framework for Parameter-Efficient Neural Network Compression |
| 11:10 - 11:40 | Tea/Coffee Break |
| Session 2.1 - Chair: Roberto Bondesan (DQC & Computing, Imperial College) | |
| 11:40 - 12:05 | Cong Ling (Imperial College) Quadratic Forms: From the Gougu Theorem to Post-Quantum Cryptography |
| 12:05 - 12:30 | Bálint Koczor (University of Oxford) Theory to Enable Practical Quantum Advantage |
| 12:30 - 13:00 | James Sexton (IBM, Europe) Quantum Centric Supercomputing: Integrating Quantum Computing with Classical High Performance Computing and AI |
| 13:00 - 14:00 | Onsite Lunch |
| Session 2.2 - Chair: Sylvain Laizet (DQC & Aeronautics, Imperial College) | |
| 14:00 - 14:25 | Michael Hanks (DQC, Imperial College) Metrology as a Compass for Trainability in QML |
| 14:25 - 14:50 | Coral Westoby (Nu Quantum) Towards Fault-Tolerant Computers with Entanglement Distribution Networks |
| 14:50 - 15:15 | Felix Burt (DQC, Imperial College) Constructing Loss Tolerant Lattice Surgery Protocols using Fusion Networks |
| 15:15 - 15:40 | Paul Burdekin (University of Oxford) Quantum Memories of Distributed Quantum Computing |
| 15:40 - 16:05 | Shang Yu (DQC, Imperial College) Extensible Universal Photonic Quantum Computing with Nonlinearity |
| 16:05 - 17:00 | Tea/Coffee and Networking |
📍 Venue
170 Queen's Gate
Imperial College London
South Kensington, London
SW7 5HF
🚇 Nearest Tube: South Kensington / Gloucester Road