Elham Kashefi

Early life and education Kashefi went to school at the Aboureihan High School in Tehran. She studied applied mathematics at Sharif University of Technology earning her bachelor's degree at Sharif University of Technology in 1996 and her master's degree in 1998. Kashefi was a doctoral student at Imperial College London, and completed her PhD in 2003 supervised by Vlatko Vedral and Steffen van Bakel.

Career and research After completing her PhD Kashefi was selected as a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford. Here she worked on the foundational structures of quantum computation. She was a research fellow at the Institute for Quantum Computing during 2005, before moving to Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a visiting scientist. a Personal Chair at the University of Edinburgh, and is a Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) researcher at the Sorbonne University. Notably she was one of the originators of Universal Blind Computing

Kashefi has also contributed to the development of quantum cloud computing. In 2017 she co-founded VeriQloud, a software provider for quantum networks. Working with members of the quantum computing community, Kashefi co-founded the national quantum networks QUantum OXford Imperial College (QuOxIC) and Quantum Information Scotland Network (QUISCO). These hubs combine physicists and computer scientists to work together on quantum science.

In Nov 2022 Kashefi was appointed Chief Scientist at the UK National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC). In April 2023 Kashefi was appointed director of the NQCC's Quantum Software Lab, based at the University of Edinburgh.

Awards and honours In 2024 Kashefi was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE). She had previously been elected to the Young Academy of Scotland in 2011.

Selected publications Her publications Demonstration of Blind Quantum Computing The measurement calculus