About

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Dr Jonte R Hance

Lecturer in Applied Quantum Foundations | Interim AMBER Group Lead | EPSRC Quantum Technologies Career Acceleration Fellow

Applied Quantum Foundations Lab, AMBER Group, School of Computing, Newcastle University

I’m currently a Lecturer in Applied Quantum Foundations, and the Interim Group Lead for the AMBER Research Group, in the School of Computing at Newcastle University. I’m also an Honorary Lecturer in the Dept of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Bristol. I have a PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and an MSci in Physics and Philosophy, both from the University of Bristol. After my PhD, I spent 11 months as a Phoenix Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Hiroshima University before starting at Newcastle.

I have published 26 articles so far, in high-impact journals (such as Nature Physics, npj Quantum Information, and Quantum Science and Technology). I have served as a peer reviewer over 80 times for various academic journals, and am part of the grant Peer Review Colleges for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the British Council. I’ve also published two Opinion pieces (two in Physics World, one in Quantum Views). I am on the Editorial Board for the UK Institute of Physics (IOP)’s Journal of Physics Communications, and am a Guest Editor for the IOP’s Journal of Physics: Photonics‘s Focus Issue on Photonics for Quantum Foundations. I am co-Chair for the IOP’s upcoming flagship conference, Photon 2026, and am on the Conference Organising Committee for the IOP’s QuAMP 2025. I am on the Executive Committee for the American Physical Society’s Forum for Diversity and Inclusion (FDI), and on the Group Committee for the IOP’s Quantum Optics, Quantum Information, and Quantum Control (QQQ) Group.

I have just been awarded an EPSRC Quantum Technologies Career Acceleration Fellowship (worth £1.7 million fEC, plus £275k promised in-kind contributions from Project Partners), which I will hold at 50% FTE from 2025-2030. I have also recently joined the £12.8 million fEC EPSRC National Edge AI Hub (2024-29) as a Co-Investigator, to Lead the new Quantum Research Theme. I am Co-Investigator on the £1.3 million fEC UKRI Cross Research Council Responsive Mode Grant Quantum Emotions: Using the Quantum Formalism to explain temporal order effects in memory for emotional events (2026-28), and the £111k fEC EPSRC Mathematical Science Small Grant Using Quantum Weirdness to Solve (NP-)Hard Problems (2026).

I research at the intersection of quantum foundations and quantum technologies: using quantum foundations to uncover new phenomena that can be used to develop new quantum technologies, and using quantum technologies to experimentally test models proposed in quantum foundations. Most quantum technologies were originally based on quantum foundational work. For instance, quantum key distribution was developed from the uncertainty principle and no-cloning theorem, quantum computation (by Deutsch’s own account) was developed from quantum parallelism and interference, and quantum metrology was developed from consideration of quantum measurement and back action, and the leveraging of entanglement and squeezing.

My work contributes to the underpinning science of quantum technologies, showing how quantum foundational ideas can be adapted into quantum technological applications. It also shows quantum technologies can benefit quantum foundations – how these technologies can be utilised to test foundational hypotheses and demonstrate foundational principles. Therefore, this work demonstrates the interplay between quantum foundations and quantum technologies. Worldwide, there is currently a race to develop useful quantum technologies. The fact that all quantum technologies were initially based on theoretical quantum foundational work illustrates how critically important quantum foundational research is, and why foundational work is necessary if we want to develop truly new quantum technologies (rather than just making short-term minor enhancements to current technologies).

Areas of Interest