Executive management

Niccolo de Masi is an experienced public company chief executive officer and board member with expertise in deep tech, mobile, and creating enterprise software-hardware ecosystems. He has served as IonQ’s CEO since February 2025 and was named Chairman of the Board in August 2025. Prior to that, Niccolo served on IonQ’s board of directors since 2021.

Over the course of his career, Niccolo has served on the boards of 14 public companies including IonQ (NYSE: IONQ), Xura (NASDAQ: MESG), Glu Mobile (NASDAQ: GLUU), Monstermob (LSE: MOB), Rush Street Interactive (NYSE: RSI), Genius Sports Group (NYSE: GENI), Resideo (NYSE: REZI), Planet (NYSE: PL), and six dMY Technology Group blank cheque vehicles. He has immense public market corporate governance experience having chaired or served on compensation, nominating and governance, and audit committees for over a decade. Niccolo also has extensive global market experience as a three-time public company CEO and a three-time private company CEO, and was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Glu Mobile and of Monstermob before the age of 30.

Niccolo has also served on several private boards including Chairing Carlyle-backed Jagex and General Catalyst-backed Ares Interactive. He has helped lead and consummate approximately 50 mergers and acquisitions and has helped raise over $5 billion in equity to support public and private companies he has led. He began his career in roles at JPMorgan, Siemens, and Technicolor.

Niccolo received first class B.A. and M.Sci degrees in physics from Cambridge University where he specialized in quantum mechanics and next-generation electron-beam lithography. He has been a member of the Leadership Council of the UCLA Grand Challenge for nearly a decade.

Inder has served as IonQ’s Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer since September 2025, and before that served as a member of IonQ’s board of directors since December 2021.

From 2019 to 2022, Inder served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Arm Limited, a British semiconductor and software design company, where he led the global finance organization as well as corporate IT operations, procurement, and enterprise security. From November 2016 to April 2019, Inder served as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and from March 2016 to November 2016, as Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, of Unisys Corp., a publicly listed global technology solutions business. Prior to that, Inder was a Managing Director at SunTrust Bank’s equities unit, and a Senior Vice President in finance at Comcast Corporation.

Inder is currently a member of the board of directors of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., a publicly listed publishing company, and of Affinity Federal Credit Union, a U.S. financial services firm. Inder has also advised startups as a member of Columbia University’s Entrepreneurship Advisory Board and participates as a project advisor for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on national security and critical infrastructure issues. Inder received an M.B.A. in finance from New York University and holds M.S. and B.S. degrees in engineering from Columbia University.

For over 26 years, Paul was the General Counsel of EMC Corporation. He served under 3 CEOs and was instrumental in driving significant growth -- revenues grew from $170M in 1990 to $24.7B in 2016, employees grew from 750 to 68,000 and the company's market cap grew to $55B. During his tenure, EMC became the world’s largest enterprise storage company and later transformed into a diversified technology company through the acquisition of over 40 companies, including VMware.

In 2013, he was the first general counsel to serve as President of the Boston Bar Association in its 223-year history. From 2017 to 2023, Paul was the general counsel of a mid stage startup company in Boston, Massachusetts. From 2024 until recently, Paul has been a Partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, the world’s largest litigation firm with over 1,300 lawyers.

Paul is Chairman of the Board of AerCap Holdings, N.V., (NYSE:AER) the world’s largest commercial aircraft leasing company. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of Progress Software (NASDAQ: PRGS) and Chairman of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee. Under Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, Paul was Chairman of the Judicial Nominating Commission and Co-Chair of the Supreme Judicial Court Nominating Commission.

Scott Millard is the Chief Business Officer at IonQ, where he leads the company’s global go-to-market strategy and execution across sales, partnerships and customer success. In this role, Scott is responsible for accelerating commercial adoption of IonQ’s quantum computing platform, scaling its global partner ecosystem, and driving sustained revenue growth as the company advances toward practical quantum advantage.

Scott joins IonQ after a distinguished 25-year career at Dell Technologies and EMC, where he most recently served as Senior Vice President, Global AI Sales, leading a $20B+ business supporting the world’s largest AI Natives and Cloud Service Providers. He oversaw a global organization of sales, technical, product, and services professionals and helped guide some of the world’s most strategic and complex AI deployments.

Previously, Scott was SVP of North America Preferred Accounts, managing a $5B enterprise and commercial sales business with industry-leading growth and customer satisfaction. He also led Global Partner Specialty Sales, overseeing a $22B+ data center portfolio and a global team focused on partner-driven IT and digital transformation.

Throughout his career, Scott has led organizations across direct sales, partner sales, specialty sales, presales, and sales strategy. This breadth of leadership experience underpins his customer-centric approach and his proven ability to build high-performance teams that win in complex, rapidly evolving technology markets.

Scott holds an MBA in Information Systems and a BS in Business Administration from Bryant University. He has been an active executive sponsor and mentor throughout his career, including serving as Executive Sponsor for Dell’s GenNext Employee Resource Group, championing the growth of emerging leaders.

Acosta has served as IonQ’s first Chief Corporate Affairs and Government Relations Officer since September 2025, where he oversees all corporate activities in relations to communications, public affairs and government relations.

Prior to IonQ, Acosta was the Senior Vice President and Chief Communications Officer for Aerospace and Defense giant, Lockheed Martin, where he led global communications strategies and activities across the four business areas and internationally, and oversaw the corporation’s media relations, executive and employee communications, marketing communications, community relations and visual communications strategies and programs. He also led philanthropy initiatives that enhance the corporation’s reputation as a good corporate citizen.

Acosta has more than three decades of experience in communications, journalism and government relations, with much of it spent leading teams, in the technology, energy and aerospace and defense sectors. Most recently, he served as vice president and chief communications officer for Resideo, a smart home technology company, where he led employee and executive communications, media relations, social media and public affairs.

Prior to that, Acosta was Vice President of Global Communications for two of Honeywell’s businesses, and he also served as Phillips 66’s global head of Corporate Communications. His career includes communications director roles at Lockheed Martin and Boeing. He also served as press secretary for NASA in the aftermath of the space shuttle Columbia disaster and through the shuttle program’s return to flight. He began his career as an award-winning print and broadcast journalist.

Acosta is on the board of directors for the STEM Next Opportunity Fund and previously served on the board of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at San Antonio and his master’s degree in strategic communication and leadership from Seton Hall University.

Katie Arrington is the Chief Information Officer at IonQ, where she oversees operational and cyber resilience and ensures the protection and modernization of IonQ’s global enterprise systems.

Most recently, Arrington performed the duties of the Department of War’s Chief Information Officer, advising the Secretary on enterprise information management; satellite, communications, and spectrum capabilities; cyber assurance; and space and emerging technology policy. Earlier, as Deputy CIO for Cybersecurity, she led defense-wide oversight of cyber strategy, governance, and compliance.

A former state legislator and a longtime member of the defense innovation ecosystem, Arrington began her federal service as the CISO for Acquisition & Sustainment, where she developed and implemented the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC). She was also instrumental in bringing AI to the COVID Supply Chain efforts. Her industry leadership includes senior roles with Exiger, Booz Allen Hamilton, Centuria Corporation, and Dispersive Networks—each focused on strengthening the defense industrial base, accelerating innovation, and protecting national security.

Currently, Mr. Cardillo is Executive Chairman of IonQ Federal where he is focused on integrating IonQ’s proprietary technologies to serve the U.S. government and its allies. He is also Chairman of the Board of Planet Federal and president of The Cardillo Group, which offers strategic consultation services to support the growth and development of the intelligence profession to secure and defend the American way of life. Mr. Cardillo also serves as an Outside Director at Seerist Federal and an Independent Director on the Board of SynthetAIc.

Previously, Mr. Cardillo was the sixth Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and served as a national intelligence advisor to President Obama, where he drove the President's daily U.S. intelligence briefing. He is the only person to lead the analytic operations at four different organizations in the US Intelligence Community – ODNI, DIA, NGA, and the Joint Staff.

Mr. Cardillo's non-profit service includes the US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation Board of Directors (Chairman), the National Intelligence University Board of Visitors, the International Spy Museum Board of Directors, the Cortex Innovation Community (St Louis) Board of Directors, and the National Academy of Sciences. He has been awarded the Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive (twice), the Presidential Rank of Meritorious Executive, the Director of National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal (twice), the Secretary of Defense Distinguished Service Medal (twice), and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Meritorious Civilian Service Award.

Mr. Cardillo earned a Bachelor of Arts in Government from Cornell University in 1983 and a Master of Arts in National Security Studies from Georgetown University in 1988.

Kate Kemp is the Chief People Officer at IonQ, where she leads the company’s global people strategy, talent development, organizational effectiveness, and culture as IonQ continues its commercial expansion and global scaling. She brings more than two decades of senior HR leadership experience across public companies and high-growth technology organizations.

Prior to joining IonQ, Kate served as Chief People Officer at Restaurant365, where she modernized the company’s HR and analytics infrastructure, elevated a global people organization, and implemented scalable frameworks for performance, leadership development, and organizational design. Her work supported significant headcount growth, enhanced operational maturity, and strengthened the company’s ability to execute during a period of accelerated expansion.

Kate previously held senior leadership roles at DocuSign, Airbnb, Autodesk, Cisco, and Intel. At DocuSign, she led HR for more than 3,000 employees worldwide, drove the company’s India expansion, and shaped its Future of Work strategy. At Airbnb, she supported global Product, Trust, and Support teams during a period of hypergrowth leading up to the company’s IPO. Earlier in her career, she led HR M&A for Autodesk across more than 20 global acquisitions, served as an HR business partner to senior leaders at Cisco, and managed compensation and employee relations programs at Intel.

Kate is recognized for her strategic, data-driven approach to human capital, her track record of building high-performing leadership teams, and her commitment to fostering inclusive, high-trust cultures that enable innovation and execution at scale. She holds an MBA from the Wisconsin School of Business and a bachelor’s degree in Human Resource Management from Michigan State University.

Christopher Monroe is a co-Founder of IonQ. He is also the Gilhuly Family Presidential Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at Duke University. Monroe has pioneered nearly all aspects of trapped ion quantum computers and simulators, from demonstrations of the first quantum gate, monolithic semiconductor-chip ion trap, and photonic interconnects between physically separated qubits; to the design, fabrication, and use of full-stack ion trap quantum computer systems in both university and industrial settings. He is a key architect of the US National Quantum Initiative, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, Optical Society of America, the UK Institute of Physics, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Dean Kassmann is EVP of Global Engineering at IonQ, where he oversees hardware and software engineering for all of IonQ’s product families worldwide. He works across the company to incorporate new technology and products in quantum computing, quantum networking, quantum cybersecurity and quantum sensing into IonQ’s engineering development process, from engineering through to manufacturing. Dr. Kassmann also oversees IonQ’s application development for its quantum computers and drives collaboration across IonQ’s global quantum product families to build and deliver our unified quantum platform to customers. 

Dr. Kassmann has over 30 years of leadership in software, hardware, and technology development and has contributed to a variety of technology areas throughout his career, including traditional chemical engineering, supply chain planning and optimization, rockets, space, and quantum. 

Prior to joining IonQ, Dr. Kassmann was Senior Director of Advanced Technology at Blue Origin, where he established and led the team responsible for company-wide applied research supporting Blue Origin’s launch vehicle, engines, and in-space product lines. He was part of the small team that developed the first series of New Shepard rockets, which successfully performed the first powered, vertical soft landing from space, and later ran the Flight Sciences organization, which developed the initial architecture for the orbital New Glenn rocket. Dr. Kassmann went on to establish the first dedicated research and development team within Blue Origin, where he led technology development from early idea generation through fielded capabilities across multiple disciplines for Blue’s current and future products. 

Prior to Blue Origin, Dr. Kassmann held roles at Amazon, where he invented the autonomous system that manages order fulfillment flow across Amazon’s supply chain, and at Aspen Technology, where he created the modeling tools, advanced control algorithms, and planning engines used for real-time operations in refineries, chemical plants, and pharmaceutical manufacturing. He holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Rice University.

Ariel Braunstein is IonQ’s Chief Product Officer, where he oversees the company’s global product strategy and leads IonQ’s applications team in developing quantum advantage for customers.

As an experienced entrepreneur, Ariel brings extensive experience across diverse roles and technology areas, ranging from early startups to Fortune 100 corporations. Most recently, Ariel led Google’s Augmented Reality initiatives and prominent video technologies at YouTube. Prior to that, Ariel co-founded Pure Digital Technologies, which brought to market one of the most successful consumer electronics devices of its era - the Flip Video camcorder. Flip Video became a social phenomenon, selling over seven million units in under four years, generating over $1B in revenue, and winning IDSA’s (2010) Design of the Decade Award. In 2009, Cisco acquired Pure Digital Technologies, and as part of the acquisition, Ariel became Cisco’s Head of Product for the newly founded consumer business, spearheading an $800M product portfolio, including Flip, Linksys, and Pure Networks.

Dr. Chris Ballance serves as President, Quantum Computing. With over a decade of experience at the forefront of the quantum computing industry, Chris has set multiple world records in quantum computing performance including highest performance quantum logic gates, longest qubit memory coherence time, and the fastest and highest performance quantum network.

Before joining IonQ, Chris founded and served as CEO of Oxford Ionics and scaled the company to over 100 employees across the globe. He holds a PhD in trapped-ion quantum computing from the University of Oxford, where he is also a FL Fellow.

Jordan Shapiro serves as President & General Manager, Quantum Platform at IonQ, where he leads the company’s integrated portfolio spanning quantum networking, sensing, security, and space-based infrastructure. He is responsible for driving the strategy and execution across IonQ’s platform - from core technology development through commercialization with enterprise and government customers. His work focuses on advancing quantum-secure communications, distributed quantum computing, and high-precision quantum sensing for positioning, navigation, and timing, as well as scaling the systems and infrastructure required to enable a global quantum internet.

Previously, Jordan served as President & General Manager, Quantum Networking, Sensing, and Security, where he led the development of IonQ’s quantum networking roadmap and spearheaded the expansion of the company’s capabilities through a series of strategic acquisitions, including Entangled Networks, Qubitekk, ID Quantique, Lighsynq, Capella Space, and Oxford Ionics. He has held multiple leadership roles across IonQ, including Vice President of Financial Planning & Analysis, Corporate Development, and Investor Relations.

Prior to joining IonQ, Jordan was an investor at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), one of the world’s largest and most active venture capital firms, where he invested in and collaborated with the teams of IonQ, Sprout Social (NASDAQ: SPT), Tempus (NASDAQ: TEM), Onshape (acq. NASDAQ: PTC), and Catalytic (acq. NYSE: PD), among others.

Jordan holds a master's degree in Global Affairs from Tsinghua University, where he was a member of the inaugural class of Schwarzman Scholars. He received his B.S. in Bioengineering and M.S. in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University, where he was a Mayfield Fellow, Class President, and Convocation Speaker. He serves on the board of Heven AeroTech.

Dr. Dave Mehuys serves as Senior Vice President of Manufacturing & Operations at IonQ, where he is responsible for the company’s Manufacturing strategy and Facilities/Real Estate operations. He was also responsible for launching IonQ’s 100,000 square-foot Facility in Washington, which is the first of its kind in the U.S. dedicated to the production of trapped-ion quantum computing systems.

Dr. Mehuys joined IonQ in March of 2022 as its first VP of Production Engineering. He has served in a variety of Engineering and Operations roles in his career, developing and commercializing semiconductor lasers and laser-based sub-systems for Optical Communications and Scientific markets. At quantum computing company PsiQuantum, he was responsible for leading Systems Engineering. At optical networking provider Infinera, he led Systems Manufacturing, Customer Service & Technical Support teams, and Hardware Engineering over an 18-year period. At laser and sub-system supplier SDL, he developed and commercialized high-power single-mode semiconductor lasers, fiber lasers, and Raman/EDFA amplifiers over a 13-year period.

Dr. Mehuys holds Masters and Ph.D. degrees from the California Institute of Technology, and an undergraduate degree in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto.

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.

Dr. Marco Pistoia serves as the CEO of IonQ Italy and Senior Vice President of Special Projects. In his dual capacity, Dr. Pistoia spearheads strategic initiatives within Italy and works with global customers to deliver quantum advantage. A recognized authority in quantum applications, Dr. Pistoia works with customers, particularly in the financial services industry, to deploy quantum security and integrate quantum-ready solutions.

Prior to joining IonQ, Dr. Pistoia served as the Head of Global Technology Applied Research and the Global Head of Quantum Computing at JPMorganChase, where he was a Managing Director, Distinguished Engineer and Prolific Inventor. Before joining JPMorganChase in January 2020, he was a Senior Manager, Distinguished Research Staff Member and Master Inventor at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York, where he managed an international team of researchers responsible for Quantum Computing Algorithms and Applications, particularly in the area of Quantum Chemistry. Dr. Pistoia was at IBM Research for 24 years.

In July 2022, Dr. Pistoia was certified as the 248th most prolific American inventor of all time according to the U.S. Patents and Trademarks Office. He is the inventor of 647 patents, 100 of which are in the areas of Quantum Computing, Quantum Communications, Quantum Cryptography, and/or Quantum-Inspired Algorithms. The rest of his intellectual property is in AI/ML, static program analysis, formal verification methods, and language-based security.

Dr. Pistoia is the author of ten books and over 200 scholarly articles, including 13 papers on Quantum Computing published in the Nature portfolio of journals. Most recently, he was the Principal Investigator of the first real-world Quantum Computing application unattainable on any classical supercomputer, published in Nature in April 2025.

Dr. Pistoia received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from New York University in May 2005. He has been serving as a member of the Industry Advisory Council for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Quantum Science Center based at Oak Ridge National Laboratory since April 2020, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) International Technical Advisory Panel (ITAP) since 2023, and the World Economic Forum's Quantum Application Hub Evaluation Panel since November 2024. He is also a featured industry collaborator of Q-NEXT, a consortium of national laboratories, universities and technology companies, led by the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and focused on Quantum Communications. Additionally, Dr. Pistoia has been General Chair, Program Chair, and Program Committee Member of numerous conferences, including the IEEE Workshop on Quantum Algorithms for Financial Applications since its inception in 2022.