Scientific director at QuTech Lieven Vandersypen is appointed as member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Dutch: KNAW), together with 16 others. On Monday 30 September, the new Academy members will be installed.

The KNAW is traditionally a society of outstanding Dutch scientists. Members are elected based on high-quality scientific achievements. A membership is for life. Every year, the KNAW elects new members to vacant positions. This is based on nominations from within and outside the KNAW. The opinion of external referees weighs into the selection.

Membership of the KNAW is a great honour for a scientific career in the Netherlands. The KNAW has ordinary members and foreign members. In addition, correspondents were appointed until May 2011. The approximately 600 members of the KNAW are leading scientists from all disciplines.

Lieven Vandersypen, Director Research at QuTech. Photo credit: Marcel Krijger.

About Lieven Vandersypen

Lieven Vandersypen achieved several breakthroughs in the field of quantum computers. A quantum computer can perform certain calculations much faster than ordinary computers. Vandersypen showed that the same principle works in reality, by executing it in molecules. That application of the so-called Shor algorithm amounted to the calculation 15 = 3 x 5. However, the approach with molecules cannot be scaled up to more complex systems, but it can be done with other types of quantum bits or qubits: these are the information-processing units of quantum computers, similar to bits in an ordinary computer that can store a 1 or a 0. Vandersypen has developed several such quantum bits that do scale and have the potential to yield a usable quantum computer. Vandersypen is scientific director of the research institute QuTech, of which he was also one of the founders. He is also a professor of quantum nanoscience at Delft University of Technology.