About

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Dr Jonte R Hance

Head of the Quantum Group (School of Computing) | EPSRC Quantum Technologies Career Acceleration Fellow | Lecturer in Computing

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

I’m currently Head of the Quantum Group, and a Lecturer, in the School of Computing at Newcastle University. I was previously Interim Head of the AMBER Group (2025), line-managing 8 Lecturers and 3 Senior Lecturers. 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 27 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 90 times for various academic journals, and am part of the United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) Talent Peer Review College, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Peer Review College, and Quantum Technologies Early Career Forum, as well as the British Council Peer Review College. I’ve also published three Opinion pieces (two in Physics World, one in Quantum Views), and contributed to the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology’s recent POSTnote on Quantum Computing, Sensing, and Communications, and Labour Tech’s recent white paper on investment in quantum technologies. 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, and a Theme Issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. 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 Committees for the IOP’s Quantum Optics, Quantum Information, and Quantum Control (QQQ) Group, Mathematical and Theoretical Physics Group, and North East Branch.

I currently hold an EPSRC Quantum Technologies Career Acceleration Fellowship (worth £1.7 million fEC, plus £275k in-kind contributions from Project Partners), funding 50% of my time plus two PDRAs (Nicolas Underwood and Peter TJ Bradshaw) from 2025-2030. I will be using this to begin building my own lab, the Applied Quantum Foundations Lab, within the Quantum Group in the School of Computing. I have also recently joined the £12.8 million fEC EPSRC National Edge AI Hub as a Co-Investigator, to lead the new Quantum Machine Learning 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 was just named one of the Quantum 100 for the United Nations’ International Year of Quantum Science and Technology.

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