Dr. Mihir Bhaskar serves as SVP of Global R&D. He has over a decade of experience in quantum technologies and led the first ever demonstration of memory-enhanced quantum communication, with technology he pioneered during his PhD. Prior to joining IonQ, Mihir founded and served as CEO of Lightsynq, where he was focused on commercializing memory-enhanced quantum interconnects to enable fast, scalable connections between quantum computing modules. Lightsynq was acquired by IonQ in 2025. Prior to Lightsynq, Mihir launched and served as research lead at the Amazon Web Services Center for Quantum Networking. Mihir holds a PhD from Harvard University.