Profile

Yasser Omar has a degree in Physics from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), and a PhD in Physics from the University of Oxford. He is currently a professor at IST, University of Lisbon, where he founded and leads the Physics of Information and Quantum Technologies Group, and is a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences. His research interests cover quantum computation, the quantum Internet, and the potential energy advantages of Quantum Technologies. He has published 60+ articles in these areas. In the last decade, he has won more than 12 European and one American research project in the field of Quantum Technologies. In 2019, he founded QuTe Lab – Quantum Technologies Laboratory, where free-space quantum communications were demonstrated for the first time in Portugal. He was also the founder and director of the Doctoral Programme in the Physics and Mathematics of Information at IST, University of Lisbon, and the coordinator of the Gulbenkian programme “New Talents in Quantum Technologies”. He is involved in the coordination of the European Quantum Technologies programme, is a member of the advisory board of CERN’s Quantum Technology Initiative, and is the president of PQI – Portuguese Quantum Institute. Together with colleagues from more than 65 countries, he created World Quantum Day – 14 April, an initiative for scientific outreach at global scale, and is involved in the coordination the UN’s International Year of Quantum Science and Technologies – 2025.