Laura Andre is a researcher, operator, and ascendant executive who tinkers with curiosity and a methodical approach to the scientific method. Today she is the CEO of quantum research company Qunett, a startup building at the edge of what’s possible to create a quantum-connected future.
Growing up in our nation’s capital, Laura’s parents worked in and around the government. Her mom was a project manager who started her own company in the government contracting space. Her dad also worked in government for the State Department. Her love for action items, contingency plans, and agendas comes from her mother’s example. Like mother, like daughter – organized and efficient.
While both of her parents are talented and successful, they are non-technical. Laura pursued a slightly different path. As a kid, she liked tinkering with things. If something was broken, she would try to take it apart and fix it. Tinkering is a theme that she has carried through her life & career.
Enrolling at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Laura studied mathematics & applied physics. Through some great internship experiences, her eyes were further opened to the magic of light-matter interactions. Then she traveled to the University of Michigan to study optics and photonics. At the University of Michigan, bigger in every way, she obtained her PhD in Electrical Engineering and served as the President of the Student Optics Society. Laura also pursued leadership training toward the end of her graduate school career and earned a certificate in entrepreneurship.
During her years of studies, she helped tutor young students in her spare time who were curious about future careers in STEM. Laura helped them learn how to tinker and stoke their curiosity. In one particular project, students from kindergarten to high school would disassemble old cameras and learn how the different subsystems worked.
Through his academic website, she found Prof. Dirk Englund, Qunett’s Founder, looking for ambitious talent to help build a quantum research startup. Qunett’s mission is to develop scalable hardware solutions for quantum device connectivity that seamlessly integrate with existing infrastructure to enable deployable quantum networks. Say what?
Yes, the market does not quite exist yet. So how do you support a company in the meantime? In the near term, Qunett will rely on revenue from early sales to researchers at universities and national labs to build a bridge to the future of quantum technology.
Laura joined the startup as a Research Engineer. She loves the hands-on technical work but also enjoys communicating & leading. Soon she was presented with the opportunity to take on an executive leadership role as Qunett’s COO. As COO, Laura helped implement proper project management best practices – better tools & processes – along with contributing to better external positioning about the work they do too.
Just seven months later, Laura was named Qunett’s CEO to lead the mighty team of five through their next phase of development. Her job as CEO is to be responsible for the company’s strategy and see all the pieces of the organization with the benefit of her previous experience. She facilitates their partnership strategy and keeps the big picture in mind to make sure all the pieces fit together. She has learned to make decisions quickly every single day. Laura admits she didn’t quite realize the scale of decision making!
From an execution standpoint, the Qunett team is focused on doing what they need to do to build out their technology. Laura is still writing code to help make that future a reality, balancing what needs to happen right away by staying in the details alongside her forward thinking tasks.
Laura and her team recently completed a month-long quantum specific bootcamp organized by Creative Destruction Lab. Through the program they learned how to better tell their story, enunciate their mission, and convey their value proposition. Best of all? They won the end of program pitch competition in a field of 33 companies!
Science Communication
In science, research is of course important. But communication is table stakes too. Trying to explain technical concepts in different ways so that they can be understood & received by general audiences is a skill Laura has worked hard to hone.
From getting feedback to asking directly what resonates, she has iterated on her storytelling of quantum technology to make sure her very technical message resonates with generalists.
For example, she describes the quantum internet by first saying, “We are trying to connect quantum devices. Quantum computers need to be enabled to talk to each other & share information in the same way that computers talk over a network like the Internet. We’re building the quantum version of that.” Obviously there’s a lot more to it! But anyone can get the quantum gist with that analogy.
Laura explained that quantum technology won’t replace the classical Internet but will instead run in parallel. Some problems are better solved by different “rails” and quantum will, in her view, upgrade Internet capabilities. Like a “three level approach”, she will uplevel the complexity of her explanations based on the interest of her subject, technical acumen, and ability to receive complexity.
3 Career Insights / Learnings
Say Yes to New Opportunities – “You never know what doors will open if you say yes to new opportunities.”
Energy Management – “Managing your energy is arguably more important than time management. If you can design your schedule around activities that give you energy and fit in things that drain you in between, you can better maximize your energy to get things done.”
Don’t Avoid Uncertainty – “In grad school, I convinced myself that I would never want to work at a startup. The inherent risk in the endeavor didn’t seem to fit my personality. What I learned later is that you shouldn’t let a fear of uncertainty guide your decisions. Look at uncertainty as a challenge to be overcome rather than a threat.”
Laura aspires to build cool technology that helps people and enables a more productive world. She would love to spend her career carrying the future of quantum technology forward, building something really awesome, while also helping to make a positive impact on the people and world around her. If you’d like to learn more about Laura, you can find her near BU’s Photonics Center working on the future of quantum research, being a tourist in her new home of Boston, or on LinkedIn. Thanks for sharing. Excited to see all the technologies, accomplishments, and out of this world difficult problems you & your team continue to solve!