Helmut Katzgraber

Helmut Katzgraber was born in Lima, Peru and is of Austrian descent. After growing up in Lima and completing military duties in Austria, he studied physics at ETH Zurich. In 2001 he received his PhD in Physics at the University of California Santa Cruz. After postdocs at the University of California Davis and ETH Zurich, in 2007 he was awarded a Swiss National Science Foundation professorship. In 2009 he joined Texas A&M University, receiving an NSF CAREER award in 2011. Between 2015 and 2020 he held the rank of professor before moving to industry. After two years as principal research manager at Microsoft, he joined Amazon Web Services in 2020 and is now the senior practice manager of the Amazon Advanced Solutions Lab. In 2021 he was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society. His current interests are the study of problems related to novel computing paradigms, such as quantum computing, as well as the application of physics tools to solve problems in industry. In his spare time he likes to scuba dive, run, and eat gelato.