QLM is enjoying an ongoing period of expansion following the successful completion of its seed round of funding. Since April, the team has grown by a further three members, each of whom bring fundamental strength to the company infrastructure.

Aaron van Pelt – Chief Commercial Officer

Aaron Van Pelt has joined the team as Chief Commercial Officer. The broad role encompasses responsibility for driving QLM’s commercial growth and go-to-market strategy and for leading business development, sales, marketing, product management, application engineering, and customer success.

Aaron joins QLM from Picarro, where he was responsible for bringing to market an Advanced Leak Detection hardware-enabled analytics solution for natural gas distribution customers. His prior experience at PSI and New Focus in gas measurement and photonics is especially relevant to the problems QLM is solving for customers.

Aaron said, “I’m so fortunate to join such a talented, driven team, working on solutions to the critical problem of reducing emissions. QLM’s solution quantifies fugitive emissions continuously, at scale and low cost, solving the problem of being blind to intermittent super emitters in oil & gas processing facilities.”

Mark Walker – Head of Manufacturing

Mark Walker joins the team as QLM’s Head of Manufacturing, responsible for setting up and shaping QLM’s operations, and scaling up manufacturing capability as we push towards commercial scale production of the revolutionary quantum gas camera.

Obtaining his BEng in materials sciences from the University of Bath, and following it up with an MBA from Southampton, Mark has gained over 25 years of experience in manufacturing and operations in the aerospace, oil and industrial sectors, with highlights including repair and overhaul of gas turbines for GE, new product development for oil drilling equipment for Schlumberger, and new product development of robotic vacuum cleaners for Dyson.

Mark said, “This is an exciting opportunity to support this start-up company in all things operational and manufacturing, and to put in place the processes and people to industrialise this ground-breaking new product and technology.”

Brian Kiernan – Senior Mechanical Engineer

Brian Kiernan has joined QLM as senior mechanical engineer, taking responsibility for driving forward the design process from the current level (around TRL7) to the fully commercially ready units at TRL8 and above, and to ensure the manufacturability and mechanical robustness of the quantum gas camera ahead of its release.

Brian earned a BA in Product Design from the University of Leeds in 1999, following this with a BSc at the University of Glamorgan, and has gained over 20 years R&D experience in the development of optical detection systems in high precision manufacturing environments.

Brian said, “For me the pleasure is the challenge to do more with less, and with the development of the airborne system this will quite literally be the case as we strive to miniaturise the product.”