Following his PhD, Devitt did
postdoctoral research at the Japanese
National Institute of Informatics in the group of
Kae Nemoto, where he was promoted to
assistant professor in 2011. Later, in 2014, he took a position of
associate professor in physics at
Ochanomizu University at the Leading Graduate School Promotion Center. In 2015 he took up a position as senior research scientist at the Japanese National Laboratories,
Riken, in the Superconducting Quantum Simulation Research Team, headed by
Jaw-Shen Tsai. In 2017, he returned to Australia where he was appointed research fellow for the
Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems (EQUS) at
Macquarie University and in 2018 he was appointed as lecturer in quantum architectures at the Center for Quantum Software and Information (QSI) at the
University of Technology Sydney. In 2020 he was awarded the inaugural Warren prize by the
Royal Society of New South Wales for his service to quantum computing development and in 2021 he was elected fellow of the
Royal Society of New South Wales and the
Australian Institute of Physics. In 2022 Devitt was appointed associate professor and research director of the Center for quantum software and information at UTS. Devitt's research has focused on the design of practical large-scale systems architectures for quantum computing and communications system. He published the first architecture, in an atom-optical system, that utilised techniques in topological quantum error correction that could be conceptually scaled to an arbitrary number of encoded qubits. In 2014, in collaboration with
NTT Communications and
TU Wien, he developed a design for a scalable system using the
Nitrogen-vacancy center and in 2017 he developed a large-scale system design for
Ion trap quantum computing in collaboration with the
University of Sussex. and 3rd generation quantum repeaters and inventing, with scientists in Japan and Australia, a quantum version of
Sneakernets. Devitt's recent work has focused largely on developing a software framework for large-scale, error-corrected machines, including methods to map high-level quantum circuits to machine level instructions and how these error-corrected circuits need to be optimised to reduce the resource load on quantum computing hardware. In 2016, he established, with
Jared Cole of
RMIT University, the first consultancy specialising in quantum technology, which became a founding member of the Spanish based industry group, the Quantum World Association (QWA). He has worked with and advised several companies and government agencies worldwide on quantum technology development, is regularly featured in the popular press, and comments for outlets such as
New Scientist and
MIT Technology Review on developments in quantum technology research. In 2016, Devitt created and hosts the
Meet the meQuanics podcast, where scientists, industry leaders and students discuss issues related to the new quantum technology sector. ==Selected publications==