Artur Konrad Ekert FRS (born 19 September 1961) is a British-Polish professor of quantum physics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, professorial fellow in quantum physics and cryptography at Merton College, Oxford, Lee Kong Chian Centennial Professor at the National University of Singapore and the founding director of the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT). His research interests extend over most aspects of information processing in quantum-mechanical systems, with a focus on quantum communication and quantum computation. He is best known as one of the pioneers of quantum cryptography. Early life Ekert was born in Wrocław, and studied physics at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow and at the University of Oxford. Between 1987 and 1991 he was a graduate student at Wolfson College, Oxford. In his doctoral thesis he showed how quantum entanglement and non-locality can be used to distribute cryptographic keys with perfect security. Career In 1991 he was elected a junior research fellow and subsequently (1994) a research fellow at Merton College, Oxford. At the time he established the first research group in quantum cryptography and computation, based in the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford. Subsequently, it evolved into the Centre for Quantum Computation, now based at DAMTP in Cambridge. Between 1993 and 2000 he held a position of the Royal Society Howe Fellow. In 1998 he was appointed a professor of physics at the University of Oxford and a fellow and tutor in physics at Keble College, Oxford. From 2002 until early 2007 he was the Leigh-Trapnell Professor of Quantum Physics at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Cambridge University and a professorial fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Since 2007 he has been a professor of quantum physics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, and a Lee Kong Chian Centennial Professor at the National University of Singapore. He has worked with and advised several companies and government agencies. He has served on several professional advisory boards and is one of the trustees of The Croucher Foundation. Research Ekert's research extends over most aspects of information processing in quantum-mechanical systems, with a focus on quantum cryptography and quantum computation. Building on the idea of quantum non-locality and Bell's inequalities he introduced entanglement-based quantum key distribution. His 1991 paper generated a spate of new research that established a vigorously active new area of physics and cryptography. It is one of the most cited papers in the field and