Quentin Ficheux receives the 2026 ERC Starting Grant

The PEPR Quantum congratulates Quentin Ficheux, a CNRS researcher at the Néel Institute and a member of the research program through the RobustSuperQ project, on receiving his 2026 ERC Starting Grant!

The ERC Starting Grant is awarded to early-career researchers who have already produced excellent work under supervision and are now ready to work independently.

To be eligible for this grant, applicants must have 0 to 10 years of experience since earning their Ph.D., demonstrate a highly promising scientific track record, and submit an excellent research proposal. The grant is open to researchers of all nationalities and in all fields of research.

Quentin Ficheux
Towards fault tolerant quantum computation with noise-biased qubits (TURQUOISE)

Before joining the CNRS in 2022, Quentin Ficheux studied at ENS de Lyon, then defended his dissertation at ENS Paris under the supervision of Benjamin Huard on quantum measurement. He then completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Joint Quantum Institute (Maryland, U.S.) on fluxonium qubits, followed by a one-year fellowship at ETH Zurich (Switzerland) on transmons-based qubit processors.

Today, his research aims to develop superconducting qubits that are as robust as possible against perturbations, while optimizing the fidelity of their control. To this end, he is exploring different information encoding schemes and control schemes at the scale of a few qubits, with the goal of proposing new architectures for quantum computers.

He is the recipient of the 2026 ERC Starting Grant for his TURQUOISE project (Towards fault-tolerant quantum computation with noise-biased qubits).

Read his full profile on the CNRS Physics website

Le projet TURQUOISE

As part of the TURQUOISE project, I will take an innovative approach by using noisy qubits to implement quantum error correction, rather than standard qubits with symmetric error rates. In noisy qubits, bit flips occur much less frequently than phase flips, which allows for more hardware-efficient quantum error correction.

The TURQUOISE project aims to deepen our understanding of quantum electrical circuits, qubit control, and quantum error correction, with the ultimate goal of opening up new horizons for practical and accessible quantum computing.

Quentin Ficheux

Within the PEPR Quantum

In the research program, Quentin Ficheux holds an Early-Stage Researcher Chair associated with the RobustSuperQ project. This chair aims to develop superconducting qubits that are as robust as possible against perturbations, while optimizing the fidelity of their control. More information to come soon in a dedicated LinkedIn post!

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