Barbara Terhal

Barbara Terhal is an authority on quantum information theory. In 1999 she was the first person in the Netherlands to get a PhD in quantum computing. In her dissertation, she introduced the concept of ‘entanglement witnesses’, which make it possible to differentiate between a state of quantum entanglement and a state of no entanglement. This concept now has widespread application in both theoretical and experimental research. Today, Terhal is an international expert on quantum error correction, a field of study crucial to building reliable quantum computers. Her search for quantum error correction has yielded many new insights along the way and led to a better understanding of what quantum computers can and cannot do.