Ignacio Cirac

J. Ignacio Cirac is a Spanish physicist, director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany. He is an expert in quantum computing and communication. With his collaborators, he introduced the first theoretical proposals of quantum computing, simulation, and communication repeaters, and developed a theory of tensor networks to solve problems in quantum physics. He studied theoretical physics and gained his PhD at the University Complutense of Madrid in 1991. After a postdoc at JILA (Boulder, US) and becoming Associate Professor at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain), he became Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Innsbruck (Austria) in 1996. Since 2001, he has been the director of the Theory Division at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching (Germany) and Honorary Professor at the Technical University of Munich. He is also the spokesperson of the International Max Planck Research School on Quantum Science and Technology, co-spokesperson of the Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology, and coordinates the consortium on theoretical quantum computing at the Munich Quantum Valley. For his work, he has been awarded several prestigious prizes, including the Prince of Asturias Award, the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award, the Benjamin Franklin Medal, the Wolf Prize, and the Max Planck Medal. He is a member of the Spanish, Leopoldina (German), National (American), and Bavarian Academies of Sciences, and holds nine honorary doctor degrees. He was a member of the board of Telefonica S.A. between 2016 and 2023.