Biography
Alexandra Waldherr is part of the Space Medicine team at the European Space Agency. At very young age, Alexandra was affiliated to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. She holds a degree as Chemical Engineer and is currently finishing her MSc. in Drug Development and Regulatory Affairs, with a BSc. in Physics on the side at the Medical University of Innsbruck (AUT). Alexandra serves as Fellow at the Stanford Center for Responsible Quantum Technology.
Alexandra obtained a technical chemical engineering degree and an undergraduate degree in Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Development, where she focused her thesis work on artificial intelligence and machine learning for antibiotics design. Her passion for quantum computing started to grow first from conducting nuclear magnetic resonance experiments in the laboratory in 2018, then on qubits from various quantum computational projects since 2018. She advised to the German Stifterverband on the establishment of German quantum skills curricula and currently to the Austrian Quantum Machine Learning initiative. In 2021, together with Somya Rathee (TU Vienna) and Nico Einsidler (IBM) she founded the Quantum Society Austria as the youngest and biggest quantum computing community in Austria.
Alexandra’s practical experience ranges from work with BASF, the Austrian Center for Molecular Medicine, the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, to work on ultra-rare decays of kaon particles with the NA62 experiment at CERN. Legally and ethically, she has held student stipends for the European Forum Alpbach in two consecutive years, where in 2021 she with her team won the Alpbach Innovation Awards proposing logistical and organizational solutions to industrial bottlenecks at Voestalpine. In 2024, she joined the European Space Agency to the Human and Robotics Exploration Program directorate in the Space Medicine team, focusing on oncology research and statistical analyses. On the side, she is a cheerful physics tutor to high school students and has been published aside from technical articles – most notably – in a cookbook. Alexandra has been an RQT Fellow since 2023.
