Professor Michelle Simmons is a Laureate Fellow and Director of the Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology, at the University of New South Wales.  She is also the founder of Silicon Quantum Computing Pty Ltd, Australia’s first quantum computing company and has developed unique technologies world-wide to build electronic devices in silicon at the atomic scale. She is internationally renowned for creating the field of atomic electronics and her team is leading the global race to develop a quantum computer in silicon.  In 2017 she was recognised by the American Computer Museum as a pioneer in quantum computing, awarded the Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology and was named the 2017 L’ORÉAL-UNESCO Asia-Pacific Laureate in the Physical Sciences. In 2018 Professor Simmons was admitted as a Fellow to the Royal Society of London and named Australian of the Year. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of Nature Quantum Information.