Hassi Norlen

Hassi Norlén is a physicist, content designer, science writer and educator with a passion for new and interesting technologies. In his day-job with IBM he is a content designer in the overlapping fields of IoT and AI, with a dose of quantum computing thrown in as a "corporate hobby." He has been with the company more than 14 years across multiple divisions and fields, from web content management, big data analytics, sensors and IoT, to quantum computing.

Tangential to his day job he also pursues his interest in physics and science in general as an IBM Quantum Ambassador, lecturing about and explaining quantum computing to diverse audiences, from research scientists and banking executives to university students. Hassi is a certified Qiskit Advocate, running Qiskit workshops and outreaches about quantum computing, IBM Quantum Experience, and Qiskit.

Hassi received his M.Sc. in solid state physics from Uppsala University, Sweden, where he also added on a degree in science journalism, "just in case." This set him on his career path at the intersection of science, software, and writing that he has pursued since. In addition to his IBM assignments as content designer and IBM Quantum Ambassador, he has an extensive education career as an astronomy teacher, astronomy outreach volunteer, and science journalist.

To summarize, Hassi enjoys spanning scales, from the very small to the very large, knowledge ranges, from the common sensical to the abstract, and technologies, from the cutting edge to the classical and traditional. The southern California Orange Coast Magazine -in an article about astronomy outreaches - had this to say:

"Were he a ship captain, Norlen would helm his way home using celestial reckoning and a sextant rather than a GPS unit. He is a purist who likes finding the stars himself, aiming his lens manually with a hand paddle, proudly declaring that his scope 'doesn't have a single computer in it.' " Orange Coast Magazine, October 2008, p 220

Back home he hooks up his Raspberry Pi to an IBM Quantum computer across the cloud, to experiment with qubits, superposition, and entanglement. It is all in a day's work!