For Nicole Barberis, a career at the highest levels of the technology industry did not seem inevitable. She came from an artistic family and was encouraged to pursue a career in music and theater, especially opera. While in college, she instead gravitated towards a career in technology, eventually working as a programmer at the forefront of machine learning, data science and now quantum computing. In her role as Technical Director on the GTM team, Nicole has managed to synthesize the two sides of her disposition. Her empathic leadership and hands-on technical skills enable her to engage productively with clients. She collaborates with them to explore how quantum computing might give insight into their business challenges, develop new products, and revolutionize their industries.
“I can read a room pretty quickly but also explain the technology and math involved in quantum computing applications – which tends to inspire some great conversations about our client’s business goals,” Barberis says. “Prospective clients can see that I enjoy my work and that leads to an authentic business exchange.”
Her journey into the tech world began with an apprenticeship as a firewall and TCP/IP network administrator in Seattle. That role offered exposure to huge datasets and inspired her pursuit of a master’s degree in applied statistics at the University of Wyoming to further her career in machine learning and data science. Her interest in quantum computing, however, began way before this, inspired by David Deutsch’s book, The Fabric of Reality. Her other heroes in the field are Maria Schuld, Michael Nielson, and Peter Wittek to name just a few of the scientists who inspire her.
“As I was doing my graduate work in machine learning, I was also going to quantum computing conferences because I realized early on that the two disciplines would converge,” Barberis says. “Quantum machine learning was another tool in my data science toolkit. The timing was fortuitous – I was soon able to turn my interest in quantum computing into an exciting career. That happened about six years ago at IBM Quantum.”
So, before joining IonQ in early 2022, she worked on the IBM Quantum team as a QML consultant. “I was writing my quantum machine learning code, executing it for client use cases, but not really focused on the hardware specifically,” she says of her time at IBM Quantum. “But when I started to pay more attention to the physics of the qubits and the architecture of the chips, I realized that trapped-ion quantum computers are the future.”
Nicole says she was impressed by IonQ’s technological edge and singular focus on building the best quantum computers in the world, along with the individual work of the founders. It’s her first time not working for a mega corporation like IBM. She loves having skin-in-the-game, being able to express her entrepreneurial spirit, and is totally committed to IonQ success.
Nicole considers her primary responsibility is to inspire clients and grow IonQ’s business. Typically, she can be found front and center in customer conversations, either in person or via Zoom. She jumps at the opportunity to take to the whiteboard to explain IonQ’s technical strengths – notably, how ionized atoms are used as quantum bits, or qubits, and explain the company’s differentiators at the hardware and quantum application levels. Another regular topic for discussion: how IonQ continues to iterate towards more powerful, scalable and practical quantum computers with a myriad of applications that are expected to change entire industries within the next few years.
In her spare time, Nicole retreats to some of her early interests, although there is so little time left over in the day: she is an eclectic reader covering topics from the economy, poetry, and of course math and science. She is currently reading a series of stories by the late Russian fantasy novelist, Alexander Grin. She lives in southern Wyoming.