Ilana has both an academic and commercial start-up background. She gained a PhD in quantum physics from Royal Holloway, University of London, spending most of her PhD as a student in industry at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington. Ilana then entered the start-up world working between a number of start-ups – before settling on a software-development University of Surrey start-up company, Snap Out Ltd. The work at Snap Out focused on creating ‘innovative digital products’ – with product focus on artificial intelligence, computer vision and bot technologies. Ilana quickly gained experience and worked as product director and COO.

Ilana is now merging both her quantum and start-up worlds as CEO of Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC), an early stage Oxford University spin-out company founded by Dr Peter Leek. Ilana is helping OQC is build the heart of a quantum future: employing simple, elegant approaches to provide real-world, near-term solutions using quantum computing.