Dr. Barry Sanders is Director of the Institute for Quantum Science and Technology at the University of Calgary, Lead Investigator of the Alberta Major Innovation Fund Project on Quantum Technologies, a Distinguished Chair Professor at the University of Science and Technology China and a Vajra Visiting Faculty member of the Raman Research Institute in India. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Calgary in 1984 and a Diploma of Imperial College supervised by Professor Sir Thomas W. B. Kibble in 1985. He completed a PhD in 1987 at Imperial College London supervised by Professor Sir Peter Knight. His postdoctoral research was at the Australian National University, the University of Queensland and the University of Waikato. Dr. Sanders was on the Macquarie University faculty from 1991 until moving to Calgary in 2003.

Dr. Sanders is especially well known for seminal contributions to theories of quantum-limited measurement, highly nonclassical light, practical quantum cryptography and optical implementations of quantum information tasks. His current research interests include quantum algorithms and implementations of quantum information tasks.

Dr. Sanders is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (U.K.), the Optical Society of America, the Australian Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society and the Royal Society of Canada, and a former Senior Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. He is a past President of the Australian Optical Society, past Founding Co-Chair of the Canadian Association of Physicists Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics and former Leader of the Optical Society of America Quantum Optical Science and Technology Technical Group. In 2016 Sanders was awarded the Imperial College London Doctor of Science (DSc) degree.

Dr. Sanders is a former Editor-in-Chief of New Journal of Physics, a former Associate Editor of Physical Review A, a former Editor of Optics Communications and a former Editor of Mathematical Structures of Computer Science.