Byron Villis is CEO and co-founder of Photon Foundry. He has spent close to 20 years building quantum hardware, starting with a PhD at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Quantum Computer Technology on defects in ion-implanted silicon. After a Marie Curie fellowship at CEA-Leti in Grenoble, he spent ten years at the London Centre for Nanotechnology, UCL, where he co-invented two patented radio-frequency readout technologies for qubits. He returned to Australia to work on qubit devices with Microsoft Quantum at the University of Sydney, then led the quantum programme at ASX-listed Archer Materials. He has worked full-time on Photon Foundry since May 2026.