Ronald Hanson
Events
Ronald Hanson
QuTech
About the Speaker
Ronald Hanson (1976) is a Distinguished Professor at Delft University of Technology and a principal investigator at QuTech. He is one of the four founding professors of QuTech (2014), serving as its Scientific Director from 2016 to 2020. Ronald was the main driving force in establishing the 7-year, € 615 million national program Quantum Delta NL, leading the team in the run-up phase and serving as the first chairman of its Executive Board (2021-2023).
Ronald’s research focuses on exploring and controlling quantum-entangled states, with the long-term goal of leveraging these in future quantum technologies, such as quantum computing and the quantum internet. His work combines quantum optics, solid-state physics, nuclear magnetic resonance, quantum information theory and nanofabrication. In 2014, his group made headlines by teleporting quantum data between electrons on distant solid-state chips. In 2015, he ended a decades-long scientific quest by performing the first loophole-free Bell test. In 2018, his group achieved a significant milestone by generating quantum entanglement faster than it would be lost. In 2021, his team realized the world’s first multi-node entanglement-based quantum network in the lab. In the coming years, he aims to build on these results to demonstrate the fundamentals of a future quantum internet on the road towards large-scale deployment.
Ronald has received several awards for his work, among which are the Nicholas Kurti European Science Prize (2012), the Huibregtsen Award for Excellence in Science and Society (2016), the John Stewart Bell Prize (2017), and the Physica Prize (2022). In 2019, he received the Spinoza Prize, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands. He was elected as a member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW) and of the Dutch Royal Academy of Sciences (KNAW), and as a Fellow of the American Physical Society. In 2020 he was appointed as the university’s 6th Distinguished Professor.
