MDPI World Quantum Day Webinar 2026 Session 1

Department of Physics and Astronomy, San Jose State University;
Ken Wharton is a physics professor at San Jose State University, working for the last 20 years in the field of Quantum Foundations. With Nathan Argaman, he co-authored a survey of retrocausal accounts of entanglement phenomena in Reviews of Modern Physics (2020), and he also frequently collaborates with philosopher Huw Price.

University of Maryland, College Park;
Ruth E. Kastner works in Foundations of Physics. She is author of over 4 dozen peer-reviewed publications on topics ranging from interpreting quantum theory, the quantum-classical transition, statistical thermodynamics, and the metaphysics of quantum systems. She has published 3 books: The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (Cambridge University Press, 2022); Understanding Our Unseen Reality (World Scientific, 2015); Adventures in Quantumland (World Scientific, 2019) and co-edited a collection entitled Quantum Structural Studies (World Scientific), a compilation of articles from distinguished researchers on the relation between quantum structures and the emergence of classical physics.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics;
Dr. Anindita Maiti is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, cross-affiliated with Prof. Roger Melko’s group Perimeter Institute Quantum Intelligence Lab (PIQuIL) since September 2023. Previously, she held a short postdoctoral appointment in theory of Deep Learning at Harvard Applied Math (May–August 2023), mentored by Prof. Cengiz Pehlevan. She earned her PhD in theoretical physics at Northeastern University and the NSF AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI) in May 2023, supervised by Prof. James Halverson. Anindita’s research lies at the intersection of AI/ML, quantum, particle, and statistical physics. In one direction, Anindita combines theoretical physics concepts with computational statistics to develop a physics-informed theoretical foundation for ML and guide the principled design of AI systems. Conversely, she applies this framework to construct robust and interpretable AI- and ML-based simulation strategies for quantum physics, complementary to quantum computing.

University of Houston;
Dr. Pavan Hosur is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Houston, specializing in theoretical condensed matter and quantum physics. He is interested in topological quantum matter, superconductivity, quantum many-body dynamics, and their applications in quantum information sciences.