[1] Barz studied at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, with a stay at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology within the Erasmus Programme.
[2] She earned her PhD from the University of Vienna under the supervision of Anton Zeilinger, working on various aspects of photonic quantum computing, including 'blind' quantum computing using entangled photons, where the sender knows the initial state of entanglement while companies in control of data processing do not, making it impossible for them to decode the information without destroying it.
[3][4][5][6] For her dissertation she was awarded the Laudimaxima Prize of the University of Vienna,[2][7] and her work has been featured in New Scientist and covered by the BBC and NBC.
She worked with Ian Walmsley on three-photon interference,[11][12][13] during which project she created integrated photon sources, fibre components and waveguide circuits.
Since 2022, Barz is Director of the Center for Integrated Quantum Science and Technology (IQST), the joint quantum centre of the Universities of Stuttgart, Ulm, and the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research.