Klea Dhmitri (Hamamatsu): Photonics as the hidden backbone of quantum hardware scaling

Klea Dhmitri of Hamamatsu joins Yuval to discuss the company’s role as a photonic component provider for trapped-ion and neutral-atom quantum computers. She explains key technologies such as photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), SPADs, and quantitative CMOS cameras, and how scaling to larger qubit arrays changes requirements for speed, resolution, and integration. Klea also shares how customer demand is pushing product innovation, reflects on her unconventional path into quantum, and offers advice for those looking to build careers in photonics and quantum technologies.

Transcript

Yuval: Hello, Klea. Thank you for joining me today.

Klea: Hi, Yuval. I’m glad to be here.

Yuval: So who are you and what do you do?

Klea: Hi, yes, happy to introduce myself. So I’m Klea Dhmitri and I work for Hamamatsu Corporation, which is the North American subsidiary of Hamamatsu Photonics. And I will be with Hamamatsu eight years in June. And what I do here is I lead our quantum computing and quantum communication project here in North America. And so what that means is I engage a lot with the community in helping, you know, folks from academia to industry find solutions of the product, help them find photonic solutions of the current products that they’re building, but also keeping in mind their next generation. And this is really where I work closely with our R&D colleagues in Japan and bringing these maybe R&D or prototype solutions and detection, modulation, and even lasers to these customers. And I also do a lot of marketing as well. So you’ll find me at trade shows, doing webinars, and really creating content that explains where Hamamatsu plays in this space. And so maybe a bit of a sort of a fun tidbit is actually this role in this project did not exist when I joined the company. So it was a bit serendipitous. So I’m happy to jump into that later in the conversation if you’d like to learn more.