Cambridge-based Steve Brierley awarded OBE for quantum computing contribution
Dr Steve Brierley, founder of quantum computing research and product development company Riverlane, has been awarded an OBE for services to quantum computing.
Dr Brierley has worked in quantum for over 20 years and is an expert advisor to the UK government.
He holds a PhD in quantum information, spent a decade in the intelligence community and worked as a senior research fellow at the University of Cambridge, leading quantum computing research projects.
Dr Brierley founded Riverlane in 2016 to solve the error correction problem in quantum computing. Driven by his conviction that fault-tolerant quantum computers will accelerate human progress, Riverlane – which is based at St Andrew’s House in the centre of the city – has since partnered with leading quantum hardware companies to make that happen sooner.
In 2020, Riverlane was appointed to lead a consortium which was awarded a £7.6m government grant to build a new quantum OS, Deltaflow.OS. In April 2023, Riverlane secured £15m in a Series B fundraise to accelerate the development of Deltaflow.OS.
Dr Brierley said of his OBE: “I’m humbled to receive this honour for my work on quantum computing at Riverlane. It really belongs to the many people who have been leading the charge at Riverlane – both past and present.
“The ability to harness the power of the atom to build a computer will be transformative for healthcare and climate change.
“A quantum computer will be a new tool enabling scientists and researchers to test ideas on a computer that today can only be tested in the laboratory – vastly increasing the speed of development for new medicines and technologies to reduce carbon emissions.
“Ever since I first learnt about quantum computing two decades ago I have wanted to make this happen sooner! At Riverlane we are doing this by solving the central challenge in quantum computing – which is to correct errors during the computation.
“Quantum bits are really fragile and without active error correction only small quantum computers could be built.”
