Kelsey Ortiz is Co-Founder and CTO at Photon Queue, a quantum hardware company building high-efficiency free-space quantum memory devices that serve as the RAM for next-generation quantum computing systems.

Kelsey pursued a Physics PhD at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign under Professor Paul Kwiat, where she developed deep expertise in quantum optics, photonic systems, and hardware reliability for extreme environments.

Kelsey co-led the SEAQUE experiment, deploying a compact polarization-entanglement source on the International Space Station to characterize entangled photons in orbit, a landmark achievement in space-based quantum networking.

Her hands-on background designing compact entanglement sources and testing hardware under harsh thermal and vibrational conditions directly informed Photon Queue's prototype development through the Illinois Proof-of-Concept Program.

Photon Queue raised a $4M oversubscribed seed round led by Playground Global, won the Q2B Startup Pitch Competition, and has deployed commercial quantum memory systems at Sandia National Laboratories and the University of Maryland.