Group Members

Dr James Quach

Team Leader

Dr James Quach is a Science Leader at the CSIRO, where he leads the Quantum Batteries team. He is the inaugural Chair of the International Conference on Quantum Energy. Previously he was a Ramsay Fellow at The University of Adelaide, a Marie Curie Fellow at the Institute of Photonics Science in Barcelona, and a JSPS Fellow at the University of Tokyo. He completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne in Physics. His research interest is in all things quantum, working in quantum technology, quantum computing, quantum biology, quantum chaos, quantum thermodynamics, and quantum gravity.


Dr Tadahiko Hirai

Principal Research Scientist / Visiting Professor of Yokohama City University

Tadahiko received his doctoral degree from Waseda University, Tokyo Japan in 1998 for research in the fields of semiconductor physics and semiconductor engineering. He has also published approximately 30 academic papers in the fields of semiconductor engineering, light emitting devices, quantum devices, and display technology, and has given around 10 invited presentations at international conferences. He joined CSIRO in 2008 and led research and development of blue organic EL materials and devices in the collaboration project with Japanese industry. Recently, he has been participating in a quantum battery project and is leading research on quantum light-emitting materials and hydrogen storage materials.


Dr Kieran Hymas

CERC Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Kieran is a CERC postdoctoral researcher with a passion for quantum physics and quantum chemistry. He completed his PhD in 2020 at the University of Melbourne under the supervision of A/Prof Alessandro Soncini and completed a two year postdoc in the School of Chemistry focusing on molecular spintronics, molecular magnetism and toroidal magnetism. He is currently working as a theoretician on the quantum battery team but also has broader interests relating to quantum optics, quantum game theory and quantum gravity.


Dr Jack Muir

CERC Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Dr Jack Muir is an experimental physicist and CERC postdoctoral fellow at CSIRO, where he is researching the quantum battery. Jack completed his PhD in 2023 at Swinburne University of Technology, in collaboration with the ARC Centre of Excellence in Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies (FLEET). Jack has expertise in ultrafast spectroscopy and multidimensional coherent spectroscopy (MDCS) which he employed to study 2D semiconductors and their van der Waals heterostructures. Jack’s research interests include ultrafast spectroscopy of quantum materials and systems, transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), and quantum optics.


Dr Fakhar Zaman

CERC Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Dr Fakhar Zaman is a CERC Fellow and Quantum Artificial Intelligence Engineer at CSIRO. Prior to joining CSIRO, he was with Massachusetts of Technology (MIT), USA and Kyung Hee University (KHU), S. Korea. He is a recipient of Graduate Exchange Student Fellowship at MIT, USA from 2022 to 2023, BK21 Doctoral Research Fellowship at KHU, S. Korea from 2016 to 2023, and Plaque of Excellence Award at National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Pakistan from 2012 to 2014. He is also a recipient of Best Paper Award at KICS fall conference, 2019. He completed his B.E. degree in electrical engineering from NUST, Pakistan in 2015 and Ph.D. degree in Electronics and Information Convergence Engineering from KHU, S. Korea, in 2023. His research interests include hybrid quantum-classical machine learning, deep quantum learning, quantum cryptography, and quantum error mitigation.


Kareem Raslan

PhD Student

I am a recently enrolled Ph.D. student in physics at The University of Adelaide. Currently, my research interests lie within the field of Quantum Game Theory and its practical applications. I am continuously seeking opportunities to expand my existing knowledge through fresh experiences and challenges. My affiliation with the Quantum Battery team at CSIRO has been vital at providing me with valuable learning experiences and insights.


Nguyen (Seth) Truong Thu Ngo

PhD Student

Mechatronics Engineering Graduate, PhD student at The University of Adelaide. My objective is to investigate the role of hybrid quantum reinforcement learning model in engineering control problems.


Hiu Ming Lau

PhD Student

Hiu is a PhD student with CSIRO and RMIT under Dr James Quach and Prof Andrew Greentree. He completed his B.E. Electrical Eng (Hons) and B.E. Physics at UNSW in 2023, achieving high distinction in his Honours project under Prof Andrea Morello. His research interests include general quantum computing, quantum game theory, quantum information theory and digital signal processing. He is content in spending his days staring at symbols to derive meaning.