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Lory Thorpe

Lory Thorpe is Quantum Safe lead for IBM, working with clients, partners, competitors, industry associations, standards organisation to bring together the ecosystem of stakeholders that will enable the journey to quantum safe. Supporting the quantum-safe ecosystem through consortia is an integral component of how IBM advances quantum-safe transformation across technology and industry domains and prepare for a quantum safe future.

Lory Thorpe is Quantum Safe lead for IBM, working with clients, partners, competitors, industry associations, standards organisation to bring together the ecosystem of stakeholders that will enable the journey to quantum safe. Supporting the quantum-safe ecosystem through consortia is an integral component of how IBM advances quantum-safe transformation across technology and industry domains and prepare for a quantum safe future.

As a young girl, Lory remembers taking apart a microwave oven on her way to becoming an engineer.  She worked for 24 years in the telecoms industry both on the supply side with Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia and with Vodafone.  She moved to IBM in 2021 and is now working on quantum computing helping IBM fulfil its roadmap.  She has a degree is psychology form the Open University.

Lory Thorpe speaks English, Italian, French and Spanish. Born in Canada she attended secondary school there before moving to Italy to study IT and Computer Science then Telecommunications Engineering. After a stint simultaneously as an interpreter, she joined Ericsson in Rome.  She stayed for 13 years and worked on some of the early developments of mobile phones.  She helped pioneer pre-paid and virtual network services.

Following this, she moved to a ‘totally different culture’ with Huawei as a solution director in the UK. Within three years she grew the business by 200%: she was helped by having a colleague, a native Chinese speaker who worked on the internal aspects of her job and she on the external aspects.

A move to Vodafone saw her appointed Head of Internet Things Innovation and Strategy where she built a new team and took on, somewhat reluctantly, the role of manager.  Her five years there were followed by working for Nokia Software when it was a separate part of the company and focused on enterprise software. She moved to IBM into a team for the telco sector then into quantum computing.  She says IBM has hit every one of its targets to build a successful quantum computer. 

Following this, she moved to a ‘totally different culture’ with Huawei as a solution director in the UK. Within three years she grew the business by 200%: she was helped by having a colleague, a native Chinese speaker who worked on the internal aspects of her job and she on the external aspects.

A move to Vodafone saw her appointed Head of Internet Things Innovation and Strategy where she bult a new team and took on, somewhat reluctantly, the role of manager.  Her five years there were followed by working for Nokia Software when it was a separate part of the company and focused on enterprise software. She moved to IBM into a team for the telco sector then into quantum computing.  She says IBM has hit every one of its targets to build a successful quantum computer. 

Rodney Hornstein

Rodney Hornstein started work as a programmer at IBM during his vacations in 1958 and worked there, off and on, until 1962. He joined LEO computers programming the LEO ranges and later selling them and becoming director of marketing. He lived through the turmoil of first the merger of English Electric and LEO (EEL), shielded by his boss from the turbulence. He was also shielded when EEL merged with Marconi Computers. The big bang was the formation of ICL in 1968. He lived through the often brutal years of the Jeff Cross era from 1972 to 1977 but lost faith and his natural optimism when ICL began to implode into confusion in 1979.

Rodney then spent seven years outside the IT industry but did encounter Sir Arnold Weinstock head of GEC. He was headhunted to run an ICL spin off, DAP, which he had re-engineered from a £30,000 production cost to about $5,000 and sold it into the US and UK markets. He ran Alphameric, as CEO for 5 years, chairman for 4 years, building a profitable company from a near wreck. By 1999 he became an angel investor often acting as chairman of the board. His normal optimism about technology is being tested about the current developments in AI, but he heads an AI start up with a different approach.

Richard Hopkins

Richard Hopkins is a distinguished engineer at IBM and an authority on Hybrid Cloud, AI and Quantum computing.  He started as a systems engineer in 1990 based in the north east of England.   He has worked for IBM all his working life.  He has great admiration for Louis Gerstner who turned around an ailing IBM in the early 1990s. 

From his 33 years experience of building complex systems at IBM, Hopkins sees quantum computing far closer than many think and AI still prone to hallucinations and is inaccurate.   But both are coming and the key will be not the technologies themselves but their useful adoption. 

Dennis Blackwell

Dennis Blackwell was a key figure in the British computer industry for over 50 years, in a career that spanned and contributed to some of the most important commercial initiatives of the period. He worked for the UK flagship manufacturer, ICL, and its forbears for 25 of those, starting with English Electric in 1959 and contributed to industry institutions including the British Computer Society (now known as BCS) and the Worshipful Company of information Technologists.