Taking the time: an unconventional PhD Journey

May 15, 2026

This student interview with graduating PhD student, Poya Haghnegahdar, was conducted on May 14, 2026.

It’s a busy morning, but Poya is happy to chat. Life, he says, is good these days. He and his wife have just welcomed a four-week-old baby boy, work is fulfilling, and this May he will finally graduate with a PhD in Physics from the University of British Columbia — a degree that began as a conventional continuation of his academic career before evolving into a remarkable 16-year journey through research, quantum computing startups, entrepreneurship, and back again.

“I’m embarrassed it was so far off the normal path,” he admits with a laugh.

Others see it differently. “He had better places to be,” says Jeremy Heyl, current Head of UBC’s Department of Physics & Astronomy. Looking back at Poya’s career, it is difficult to disagree.

From the beginning, physics was never simply an academic subject for Poya — it was a passion. During his undergraduate years at the University of Waterloo, he quickly realized that theoretical physics was where he belonged. Experimental work held little appeal.
“I knew from experience I didn’t belong in a lab,” he says.

Enrolled in Waterloo’s inaugural Mathematical Physics program — learning a combination of mathematics and theoretical physics — Poya completed his undergraduate degree in only three years, graduating as the program’s sole student.

“I was in a hurry,” he recalls.

His interests gravitated early toward quantum gravity, and during his undergraduate studies he completed a project at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, which had only recently opened at the time. Before the institute’s building was completed, researchers worked out of a rented space above a pub and restaurant in Waterloo — an appropriately unconventional setting for a student researcher working in a field redefining the boundaries of physics.

Poya continued his graduate studies at UBC, where he began working with renowned physicist Bill Unruh on quantum gravity and the intersection of quantum mechanics with general relativity. It was during this period that his outlook on research began to shift.
From Unruh, he says, he learned something unexpected: not to rush. Inspired by that philosophy, Poya took it to heart, taking nearly twice as long as expected to complete his master’s degree.

By the time he began considering PhD research, however, his interests had drifted toward quantum computation. Around the same time, Robert Raussendorf - then a professor at UBC and a pioneer in quantum computing (and currently Professor of Physics at Leibniz University Hannover) - was searching for a student. Raussendorf agreed to supervise him, making Poya his very first PhD student.

Three years into the program, just as he was settling on a topic, an unexpected opportunity arrived. A former friend from Waterloo contacted him about helping launch a startup in Vancouver focused on quantum computing applications. The opportunity was impossible to ignore.

Poya joined the company, 1QBit, initially as an intern. What began as a tiny startup of just a few staff and students expanded rapidly. By the end of the summer, the company had grown to roughly 20 employees, and Poya had become a product coordinator.
1QBit collaborated with D-Wave, whose quantum annealing machines were among the first commercially available systems capable of performing quantum processes. The challenge was translating real-world problems into mathematical optimization tasks that D-Wave’s hardware could attempt to solve more efficiently than classical computers.

“This was an amazing time,” Poya says. “It was a unique experience that was all research. It threw me into a completely different direction, and I was loving it.”

He remained at 1QBit for four years, during which the company expanded to more than 50 researchers and engineers. Over time, however, limitations in early quantum computing hardware became increasingly clear. The available number of qubits remained far too small for broad commercial applications, and quantum annealing systems could only tackle highly specialized optimization problems.

As Head of Applications, Poya occupied a role that bridged research teams, company founders, and business development. The challenge, he realized, was identifying commercially useful problems that could actually be solved in the present day. Increasingly, that pointed towards artificial intelligence.

“This was before ChatGPT,” he says. “Researchers were coding neural networks by hand, from scratch.”

Motivated to focus on practical, real-world applications, Poya eventually founded his own company: FiND Innovation Labs, an AI and machine-learning startup focused on retail planning, supply chains, and predictive analytics. The company developed systems that used machine learning to improve recommendation engines, inventory management, and supply-chain optimization. Rather than relying on human intuition alone, the software analyzed historical sales patterns and customer data to make more precise purchasing and inventory decisions.

For several years, the company thrived. Then COVID happened. The decline in business eventually forced the company to dissolve. Since then, Poya has continued working on smaller AI and data-driven projects under a small company (BuildAI Tech. Inc.)
Meanwhile, his PhD sat unfinished in the background.

After spending so many years away from academia, Poya admits he convinced himself that he had essentially completed the degree already.

“I thought I had done 90 percent of it,” he says. “All that was left was the thesis.”

But over time, his perspective changed. “In today’s world there’s this lure that things have to happen fast,” he reflects. “But things that are worth it take time. They take pain, discovery, and passion. The last mile is literally the greatest value.”

Eventually, he decided he wanted to finish properly — not simply for the credential, but to fully appreciate the value of the work he had done during his PhD.

“Having the work examined by experts in the field,” he says, “required far more effort, persistence, and refinement than I had imagined. In the end, that final stretch was probably as valuable as a large part of the PhD itself.”

Still, reconnecting with his supervisor after nearly a decade felt intimidating. “I didn’t know how to do it,” he says. “Do I just send a message? What would he think?”

To his surprise, the response was overwhelmingly supportive. His supervisor was enthusiastic about helping him finally complete the degree — fittingly, during the professor’s final term at UBC. 

For Poya, the experience reinforced an important lesson.

“Once you really want something,” he says, “people want to see you succeed.” 

Looking back now, his advice to students reflects the unusual path his own career has taken.“In today’s world, everything is in a massive rush,” he says. “But if you look at companies that do meaningful work, that takes dedication, discovery, and research.”
For him, the value of academia extends beyond any single topic or thesis.

“You can read the book yourself,” he says, “but what academia teaches you is discipline — that it’s worth methodically and systematically taking the time to learn something deeply and solve it properly.”

And when it comes to changing direction? He sees no shame in it at all.

“It’s okay to change,” he says. “I love theoretical physics — sitting and thinking about these ideas, even if I understand half a percent of it. But I also love being able to explore different things.”

His last piece of advice?

“Once you find something you’re interested in, give it time. Let it mature and spend more time with it.”

As a final comment, Poya wishes to thank the “great many people in the physics department”, his committee and GP+S who worked hard to “figure out a way” for him to come back and finish the work.

 

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