Quantum technologies promise a huge diversity of applications. Microelectronics and lasers, two of the great technological drivers of revolution to the current information age, were comparatively rudimentary technological applications of quantum theory. As a society, we now seek to harness the full potential of quantum mechanics for the benefit of communication, cryptography and information processing/computation (which ultimately provides the language to describe any possible application of a quantum device).

Dr. Kay's research addresses a broad spectrum of theoretical topics in Quantum Information, with a particular focus on ideas that might serve to make quantum technologies, particularly quantum computers, a more realistic experimental prospect. He is particularly known for his results on perfect quantum state transfer, but has also worked extensively on quantum memories (the 'Toric code' and similar), quantum cloning and entanglement detection.