Dr Heike Riel

Dr Heike Riel is IBM Fellow, Head of Science of Technology and Lead of IBM Research Quantum Europe & Africa. She leads the Science of Quantum & Information Technologies department aiming to create scientific and technological breakthroughs in Quantum Computing and Technologies, Physics of Artificial Intelligence, Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and to explore new directions to computing. 

She received the master’s in physics from the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg and the PhD in physics from University of Bayreuth and an MBA from Henley Business College. She has authored more than 155 peer-reviewed publications and filed more than 50 patents. 

She has received several prestigious honors, e.g., elected member of the Leopoldina – German National Academy of Sciences and the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences; she was awarded the APS David Adler Lectureship Award in the Field of Materials Physics, the Applied Physics Award of the Swiss Physical Society, and the 2022 IEEE Andrew S. Grove Award. She was honored as Fellow of the American Physical Society, and with an honorary doctorate by Lund University. In February 2022 she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.