Building the U.S. Quantum Supply Chain with Kate Timmerman

What does it actually take to turn a world-class research university into a functioning quantum industry hub — in real time, in one year? Corey Stambaugh, Director of Maryland's Capital of Quantum initiative, joins Sebastian Hassinger at the 2026 Quantum World Congress to walk through how the Discovery District went from an announcement to a building with a dilution refrigerator pumped down to 14 millikelvin in under twelve months. This episode is a ground-level look at regional quantum ecosystem building: the strategy, the speed, and the honest tensions between scientific timelines and economic development goals.

What does it actually take to get quantum technology into the hands of the people who will use it? Isabella Bello Martinez, Senior Lead Quantum Technologist at Booz Allen Hamilton, brings a rare perspective to that question — one shaped by biomedical engineering, economic analysis of AI's industrial impact, and years of building interdisciplinary quantum teams for federal and defense clients. This episode explores quantum workforce strategy, the operationalization gap between physics and deployment, and why the most important skill in quantum right now might not be a physics degree.

Fujitsu's quantum roadmap is one of the most ambitious in the world — 10,000+ physical qubits and 250 logical qubits by 2030 — and Dr. Shintaro Sato is the person responsible for making it real. In this episode, Sebastian talks with Sato about the engineering realities of scaling superconducting quantum computers, a novel approach to fault-tolerant logical operations called STAR architecture, and a just-announced tin-vacancy diamond-spin prototype that Fujitsu intends to use as a photonic interconnect between quantum modules. If you're tracking the path from NISQ to fault-tolerant quantum computing, this conversation covers the full stack.

What does it actually take to evaluate a quantum startup when the founders are showing you an optical table instead of a product? Marie Lepske, General Partner at Constructor Capital, has been making early-stage bets on quantum and deep-tech science founders for nearly a decade — and she's one of the few investors in Europe operating at GP level with the scientific background to read the physics herself. This episode explores what specialist quantum venture capital looks like in practice, why the market is getting noisier, and what signals she's actually watching.

What if the mathematical foundation of quantum mechanics — the infinite continuum of Hilbert space — is subtly wrong, and quantum computers are about to prove it? Tim Palmer, Royal Society Research Professor Emeritus at Oxford and the physicist who revolutionized weather forecasting with ensemble methods, joins Sebastian Hassinger to discuss Rational Quantum Mechanics (RaQM): a new framework published in PNAS in 2026 that predicts Shor's algorithm will fail at a few hundred error-corrected qubits — not for engineering reasons, but because of a fundamental, gravity-induced limit on quantum information itself.